JOHN WHEELER-BENNETT – HIGH-CARB HISTORIAN Witness to History: The Life of John Wheeler-Bennett Victoria Schofield, New Haven: Yale University Press 346 pp., $50 Yale University Press promises that Witness to History “will fascinate anyone interested in the great political figures of world history during the twentieth century.” On this book’s back cover, Alistair Horne hails John… Continue reading
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Anthony Powell – England’s Proust
ANTHONY POWELL – ENGLAND’S PROUST A Dance to the Music of Time Reading Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time can seem a formidable commitment. It is a series of twelve novels (totalling one million words) published between 1951 and 1975, following the lives of over 300 characters during seven decades of the… Continue reading
Nosferatu – Monster of Mitteleuropa
A street in Sighisoara (formerly Schassburg) – home town of Vlad “Dracul” Tepes, the 15th century Wallachian prince whose bloodthirsty reputation helped inspire Bram Stoker NOSFERATU – MONSTER OF MITTELEUROPA The dreadful concept of the vampire is common to many cultures, but although there are vampire stories native to Britain (such as that surrounding Croglin… Continue reading
Homage to suburbia – The Diary of a Nobody
HOMAGE TO SUBURBIA The Diary of a Nobody George & Weedon Grossmith In a recent book, Freedoms of Suburbia, former New Society editor Paul Barker notes ruefully To call anyone or anything ‘suburban’ is to utter a put-down, an anathema, a curse For many (especially on the left), the word evokes a lazy, unfair cliché… Continue reading
Monday night
MONDAY NIGHT The roundest moon was resting on our road, Making of the lane a silver stream – A chilly channel running from some Sea To carry its Tranquillity to me. I waded in those waters ‘til it rose, Falling upwards, bringing its own blue. It shook itself untangled from the trees… Continue reading
Meet Lee Pefley – sociopath (and sage)
MEET LEE PEFLEY – SOCIOPATH (AND SAGE) Fields of Asphodel is the latest of Tito Perdue’s five critically acclaimed satires detailing the uproarious, curmudgeonly life of Leland (Lee) Pefley. It is impossible to review this book in isolation, so we need to know what has gone before – all the more necessary for a mostly… Continue reading
Northern Soul
NORTHERN SOUL Ingmar Bergman’s 1957 The Seventh Seal has become so deeply ensconced in the cultural picture library that almost everyone hearing the title will conjure up instantly the film’s most memorable image – blanched-faced, black-cloaked Death playing chess with Antonius Block (Max von Sydow), a Swedish knight recently returned from the Crusades. At stake… Continue reading
Sent from Coventry
SENT FROM COVENTRY Fragments of angels, segments of saints, pieces of people, broken birds, refracted sunbeams, tumbled landscapes, jumbled inscriptions, unidentifiable blocks of time-worn colour—I looked for a long time at the medieval glass so carefully but meaninglessly re-set in Holy Trinity church beside the Cathedral at Coventry. These disjecta membra of former didactic decorations spoke… Continue reading
Les Visiteurs – The ghosts who came as guests
Les Visiteurs – The ghosts who came as guests If a film made as recently as 1993 can be said to be a ‘classic’, Les Visiteurs, the highest-grossing French-made film to date, is a classic in the making. Directed by Jean-Marie Poiré, who is a scion of a French media dynasty, Les Visiteurs was co-written… Continue reading
The Last Leopard – change and permanence in a haunted landscape
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