Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape Cal Flyn, William Collins, 2021, pb, £9.99 In our era of ecological Angst, many are desperately seeking strategies to mitigate human damage, but Scottish writer Cal Flyn suggests a holistic new way of seeing these problems – one that is simultaneously haunted, and hopeful. She writes often… Continue reading
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England in infra-red
Nightwalking – Four Journeys Into Britain After Dark John Lewis-Stempel, Doubleday, 2022, hb, 104pps, £9.99 John Lewis-Stempel is nearly as prolific as the natural world about which he writes so famously, and so well. His voice is welcomely distinctive – a traditional agriculturist of lyrical articulacy, an observant ecologist who finds mythopoeic magic in everyday… Continue reading
The goodness of King George
George III – The Life and Reign of Britain’s Most Misunderstood Monarch Andrew Roberts, London: Allen Lane, 2021, 758pps, £35 Andrew Roberts is renowned for Winston Churchill scholarship, starting with the lacerating Eminent Churchillians of 1994 and culminating in 2018 with his exemplary Churchill: Walking with Destiny. But he has always had other interests, as… Continue reading
A painter’s peregrinations
Field Notes: Walking the Territory Maxim Peter Griffin, London: Unbound, 132pps, hb., £16.99 Several years ago, when I was thinking about writing a book about Lincolnshire, I found a strikingly original Twitter account. Almost every day, the seemingly tireless Maximpetergriff posted pictures painted during or after apparently endless walks across Lincolnshire, in all weathers and… Continue reading
Art as agitprop
Artivism: The Battle for Museums in the Era of Postmodernism Alexander Adams, Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2002, 201pps, pb., £14.95 Ars gratia artis – ‘art for art’s sake’ – was the motto of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer studio, seen at the start of their films, surrounding their logo of a roaring lion. MGM was of course… Continue reading
A banquet of Bacon
After/Après Francis Bacon Alexander Adams, Bristol: Golconda Fine Art Books, 2022, 60 pages, £10. English and French (French translation by Peggy Pancini) In today’s British landscape of the arts, Alexander Adams stands out strongly – a craftsman among conceptualists, a ‘conservative’ among self-styled ‘radicals’ and a dogged campaigner for better aesthetics, and subtler understandings of… Continue reading
Flights of fancy (and fact)
Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald, London: Jonathan Cape, 2020, hb., 261pps. £16.99 Helen Macdonald’s 2014 H is for Hawk, her searing account of a grief-charged relationship with a goshawk, soared into the literary firmament, the best book about a bird since T. H. White’s Goshawk of 1951 or J. A. Baker’s 1967 Peregrine. These articles on… Continue reading
English origins
The Anglo-Saxons – A History of the Beginnings of England Marc Morris, Hutchinson, 2021, hb, 508pps, £25 England is one of the oldest nations in the world, and tales of its foundation have been told since at least 731 AD, when the Venerable Bede completed his Historiam Ecclesiasticam Gentis Anglorum. The Northumbrian monk described the… Continue reading
Fernando Pessoa’s many persons
Pessoa: An Experimental Life Richard Zenith, Allen Lane, 2021, 1,088pp, £40 For a small country, Portugal has many major claims to fame – medieval navigations, rich imperial history, the Lisbon Earthquake, sweetly-melancholic fado folk-music, and, of course, port-wine. We hear less about Portuguese poetry, despite practitioners ranging from Lusiads author Luis Vaz de Camões (1524/5-1580)… Continue reading
The index, linked
Index, A History of the, Dennis Duncan, Penguin, 2021, 340 pps., £20 All readers of non-fiction take for granted the ability to find whatever they’re looking for quickly by recourse to an index at the end. In this playful but profound work, literary historian Dennis Duncan shows that this apparent afterthought has an intriguing history… Continue reading