Obedience is Freedom Jacob Phillips, London: Polity, 2022, pb., 172 pages, £13.55 Johannes Brahms had a personal motto, frei aber froh (‘free but happy’), which features famously as the note sequence F-A♭-F in the first movement of his Third Symphony. He adopted this cheerful philosophy as a jovial riposte to his friend, the violinist Joseph… Continue reading
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The imperial imperative
In the Shadow of the Gods: The Emperor in World History Dominic Lieven, London: Allen Lane, 2022, 500 pps. hb., illus., £35 In the battle for precedence between the ‘great man’ and more ‘inclusive’ views of history, an account of emperors across centuries and cultures feels like a defiant assertion of the older school. Cambridge… Continue reading
Forgotten landscapes – fens in history and imagination
Twenty-five years ago, when I first started thinking about living in Lincolnshire, I kept coming up against strange preconceptions. People I talked to often seemed to have peculiar ideas about what the county was like – how it looked, how difficult to get to, how isolated it was, how unsophisticated it must be. But not… Continue reading
A poet’s pole position
Arctic Elegies Peter Davidson, Carcanet, 2022, pb., 72pps. £11.99 There are poets associated with particular places, or special states of mind, but Peter Davidson has made a genre of his own, as celebrant of a cardinal point. His interests are wide-ranging, but magnetized in one compass direction – towards ‘Norths’ geographical and conceptual, Norths as… Continue reading
The world in motion
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
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