CHURCHILL’S HOME FRONT First Lady – The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill Sonia Purnell, London: Aurum Press, 2016, pb., 392pps., £9.99 No More Champagne – Churchill and His Money David Lough, London: Head of Zeus, 2016, hb., 532pps., £25 Winston Churchill is one of the most closely-examined (and lionised) of all politicians, and it… Continue reading
Posts Tagged → Chronicles
Island insurrectionists – review of The Bad Boys of Brexit by Arron Banks
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
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
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
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
Rise of the Dominatrix – review of Margaret Thatcher: Not for Turning by Charles Moore
Rise of the Dominatrix Margaret Thatcher: Not for Turning Charles Moore, London: Allen Lane, 2013, 859pp When Margaret Thatcher died last April, the obsequies were at times almost drowned by vitriolic voices celebrating her demise. There were howls of joy from old enemies, street parties, and a puerile campaign to make the Wizard of Oz… Continue reading
My Scots Gothic travelogue for Chronicles
The July issue of Chronicles contains my travelogue about Lothian – Iron Age equestrians, Traprain Law, the legend of the saltire, Rosslyn Chapel bizarrerie, Mary Queen of Scots, Covenanters, Edinburgh cemeteries, Scottish independence, Greyfriars Bobby, Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta…
“Pity Poor Bradford”
“Pity poor Bradford” Bolling Hall has squatted on its plot since the fourteenth century, hunched against the wind and rain of the West Riding – a North Country architectural essay in dark yellow sandstone looking warily down a steep hillside onto Bradford’s vale. Old though the building is, the estate’s foundations go deeper than Domesday,… Continue reading
Me on Dr. Johnson in the Hebrides
Latest article for Chronicles – “An Englishman in his Near Abroad” The August issue of Chronicles has my article on Samuel Johnson’s celebrated trip to the Hebrides – seven pages of Pictish/Celtic legend, Culdees, Vikings, golden eagles, sea-storms, and of course the great man at his most relaxed and clubbable. Not available on line, so you will need… Continue reading
Latest article for Chronicles – “Pity Poor Bradford
The June issue of Chronicles contains my article “Pity Poor Bradford” – a travelogue about the West Riding and ideas of the English North, touching on everything from the Normans to Ted Hughes, Geoffrey Hill and Peter Davidson via Civil War apparitions and the Industrial and Immigration Revolutions. Not available on line, sadly – but then… Continue reading