HOMING IN ON ENGLAND The Story of England – A Village and Its People Through the Whole of English History Michael Wood, London: Penguin, 2011, 440 pp. Michael Wood begins with a quotation from Blake: “To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit.” This summarises his aim, which is to zero in on one small… Continue reading
Date Archives → October 2017
Letter from Indo-Portugal – irreducible India
LETTER FROM INDO-PORTUGAL – IRREDUCIBLE INDIA When Vasco da Gama’s three battered little ships dropped anchor off Calicut on May 20, 1498, after a voyage of over ten months, they had finally found the sea route between Europe and India so long sought by Portugal’s kings and explorers. Apart from the desire for knowledge, Da Gama’s… Continue reading
George Borrow revisited
GEORGE BORROW REVISITED George Borrow’s Second Tour of Wales in 1857 Edited by Ann M. Ridler, Wallingford, Oxon.: Lavengro Press, 2017, £15 paperback or as PDF from www.lavengropress.co.uk George Borrow’s 1862 Wild Wales is a classic of a peculiar kind – the record of a bombastic, exhibitionist philologist’s 1854 cross-country peregrination to gratify a boundless… Continue reading
Letters from antediluvian Europe
LETTERS FROM ANTEDILUVIAN EUROPE In Tearing Haste: Letters Between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor Edited by Charlotte Mosley, London: John Murray, 2009, 416pp. In times of texting and sexting, Twittering and wittering, there is something antediluvian about epistolary collections – a whiff of fountain pens and headed notepaper, morocco-topped escritoires in long-windowed drawing rooms… Continue reading
My New Welsh Review appraisal of George Borrow’s Second Tour of Wales in 1857
My New Welsh Review review of George Borrow’s Second Tour of Wales in 1857 (edited by Ann Ridler) is now available here – https://www.newwelshreview.com/review-19.php (N.W.R. subscribers only, regrettably)
Outré Europe – review of Basile’s Tale of Tales
OUTRÉ EUROPE The Tale of Tales, Giambattista Basile, trans. Nancy L. Canepa, London: Penguin Classics, 2016, pb., $20 Like most Western children, I was reared partly on fairy-tales. Presented in beautifully illustrated Ladybird books, these were as much a part of my early childhood as the house decor, encouraging me to read, and arousing inchoate ideas… Continue reading