My review of Kassia St. Clair’s engrossing Secret Lives of Colour will be in the July 2018 issue of Chronicles I have also just sent them my review of David Cannadine’s Victorious Century (no idea yet when that will be published)
Posts Tagged → Derek Turner
The Camelot-Chequers axis
THE CAMELOT-CHEQUERS AXIS Union Jack: John F. Kennedy’s Special Relationship with Great Britain Christopher Sandford, Lebanon, N.H.: ForeEdge, 2017, hb. 300pps Cultural historian Christopher Sandford’s enquiring eyes range widely, playing over everything from cricket to Kurt Cobain, the Great War to The Great Escape, Conan Doyle to Eric Clapton, and countless other late nineteenth and… Continue reading
My Quadrant review of Michael Wilding’s novel, Little Demon
Pleased to say the May issue of the renowned Australian journal Quadrant carries my review of Michael Wilding’s latest novel, Little Demon – https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/05/
Old North – wanderings in Lothian
OLD NORTH – WANDERINGS IN LOTHIAN Ravens over North Berwick Law – could any phrase be more hyperborean? I turned the words over lazily as I watched the birds fifty feet above, circling and diving on each other, flicking expert wings, commenting incessantly on their sport as they alternately dropped or upheld the thin blue… Continue reading
First Lady: The Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill, by Sonia Purnell, and No More Champagne – Churchill and His Money, by David Lough
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
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
Hans Sloane – cataloguer of curiosities, maker of modernity
HANS SLOANE: COLLECTOR OF CURIOSITIES, MAKER OF MODERNITY Collecting the World – The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane James Delbourgo, London: Allen Lane, 2017, hb., 504pps., £25 Sloane Square, Sloane Street and Hans Place contain some of London’s most desirable addresses, but what do the occasionally resident Qatari princelings and Russian oligarchs, or retreating… 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
Letter from Indo-Portugal – irreducible India
LETTER FROM INDO-PORTUGAL – IRREDUCIBLE INDIA When Vasco da Gama’s three battered little ships dropped anchor off Calicut on May 20, 1498, after a voyage of over ten months, they had finally found the sea route between Europe and India so long sought by Portugal’s kings and explorers. Apart from the desire for knowledge, Da Gama’s… Continue reading
George Borrow revisited
GEORGE BORROW REVISITED George Borrow’s Second Tour of Wales in 1857 Edited by Ann M. Ridler, Wallingford, Oxon.: Lavengro Press, 2017, £15 paperback or as PDF from www.lavengropress.co.uk George Borrow’s 1862 Wild Wales is a classic of a peculiar kind – the record of a bombastic, exhibitionist philologist’s 1854 cross-country peregrination to gratify a boundless… Continue reading