The Last Leopard – change and permanence in a haunted landscape The Last Leopard– A Life of Giovanni Tomasi di Lampedusa David Gilmour, Eland, London, 2007, pb, 27pps, £12.99 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957) was the last hereditary Prince of Lampedusa, a barren, seven-mile long island situated between Malta and the African coast but belonging… Continue reading
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Apocalypse Now – War in the era of love and peace
Apocalypse Now – War in the era of love and peace The Vietnam War has been the inspiration for several fine films, but the best-known (and arguably the best) is probably Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Academy, Palme D’Or and Golden Globe-winning Apocalypse Now (the best version of which is 2001’s Apocalypse Now Redux). The film’s… Continue reading
The Leopard at large – Lampedusa’s Letters from London and Europe
The Leopard at Large Letters From London and Europe Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Richmond (Surrey): Alma Books 203 pp., £14.99 Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa was the last prince of his long and languid line, but soon after his death he became one of the first names in 20th-century Italian letters. The Leopard, his 1958 novel… Continue reading
Hakluyt’s Voyages – understated epic of an island nation
Hakluyt’s Voyages – understated epic of an island nation Richard Hakluyt’s Voyages (1) was once standard reading for British schoolboys, but has now sadly fallen into desuetude. Sadly, because it provides an intimate and entrancing record of the Elizabethan age of exploration, an age which helped to shape England’s self-image – Froude called it “the… Continue reading
The Wicker Man – a very British horror
THE WICKER MAN – A VERY BRITISH HORROR The Wicker Man (1973) is widely regarded as the best British horror film ever made, and has earned the dubious compliment of having been the subject of a Hollywood remake starring Nicholas Cage. Whether one agrees with this analysis or not, few would dispute that it is… Continue reading
The Lincolnshire Marsh – an unloved landscape
THE LINCOLNSHIRE MARSH – AN UNLOVED LANDSCAPE Here, you can see almost forever. It is a great green plain bounded by low wolds to the west and the North Sea to the east, by the River Humber to the north and the shining mudflats of the Wash to the south. It is a landscape for… Continue reading
Sustained magnificence – Max Hastings’ Winston’s War
Sustained Magnificence Winston’s War: Churchill 1940-1945 Max Hastings, New York: Alfred A. Knopf 576 pp., $35.00 Sixty-five years after the last guns ceased firing on the last Pacific atoll, Britons of all political persuasions are still wallowing in tepid World War II nostalgia. For Atlanticists, neoconservatives, and classical liberals, the war was a great Anglo- sphere… Continue reading
Homing in on England – Michael Wood’s The Story of England
Homing in on England The Story of England—A Village and Its People Through the Whole of English History Michael Wood, London: Penguin 440 pps, £20 Michael Wood begins with a quotation from Blake: To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit. This line betokens his aim, which is to zero in on one small English… Continue reading
As I went walking down Broadway…
As I went walking down Broadway… Cities, like men, are embodiments of the past and mirages of unfulfilled dreams Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, Matrix of Man, 1968 The subway train clanked and screeched out of the darkness at last into stretched autumnal sunshine. I rattled northwards in an emptying carriage gazing down on nameless nondescript streets, and… Continue reading
Soulcraft as leechcraft – A. N. Wilson’s Our Times
Soulcraft as Leechcraft Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II A.N. Wilson, New York, NY: Farrar, Straus & Giroux 496 pp. $30.00 The photographs on the jacket of Our Times provide a pointed reminder that the British past is not just another country but another continent. The newly crowned Queen looks self-conscious yet confident in Cecil… Continue reading