ISLAND INSURRECTIONISTS The Bad Boys of Brexit Arron Banks, London: Biteback, 2016, hb., £18.99 Arron Banks looks out proudly and pugnaciously from the cover of Bad Boys of Brexit like a character in a Hogarth engraving, flanking the equally Hogarthian Nigel Farage, in a photo taken as Farage faced the globe’s agog media on the auspicious… Continue reading
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Hans Sloane – cataloguer of curiosities, maker of modernity
HANS SLOANE: COLLECTOR OF CURIOSITIES, MAKER OF MODERNITY Collecting the World – The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane James Delbourgo, London: Allen Lane, 2017, hb., 504pps., £25 Sloane Square, Sloane Street and Hans Place contain some of London’s most desirable addresses, but what do the occasionally resident Qatari princelings and Russian oligarchs, or retreating… Continue reading
Homing in – review of The Story of England by Michael Wood
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
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
Margaret Thatcher – Everything She Wants by Charles Moore
METTLE OF THE IRON LADY Margaret Thatcher: The Official Biography – Everything She Wants Charles Moore, London: Allen Lane, 2015, 821pp, £30 At the end of the first volume of Charles Moore’s lapidary trilogy, we left Mrs. Thatcher standing in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1982, surrounded by the shades of past national leaders, bathing in… Continue reading
A watch in the Middle Marches
A WATCH IN THE MIDDLE MARCHES “O, the wild hills of Wales, the land of old renown, and of wonder” George Borrow, Wild Wales I step silent across the flagged floor below weathered slates and beams, sleep-held family breathing behind, the only other sounds the scratching of terriers’ claws as they push past into rain-remembering… Continue reading