METTLE OF THE IRON LADY Margaret Thatcher: The Official Biography – Everything She Wants Charles Moore, London: Allen Lane, 2015, 821pp, £30 At the end of the first volume of Charles Moore’s lapidary trilogy, we left Mrs. Thatcher standing in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1982, surrounded by the shades of past national leaders, bathing in… Continue reading
Posts Tagged → Derek Turner
“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
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
Connor Post review of A Modern Journey
James Connor on A Modern Journey James Connor’s kind and thoughtful review of A Modern Journey now available for edification at his unique Connor Post news aggregation site – “an outstanding wordsmith” etc. Blushes – but thanks! http://connorpost.com/exclusive/james-connor-2016-06-12-ambrosial-lucabrations.html
Growing Wild by Michael Wilding
Class-Observation Growing Wild, Michael Wilding, 2016, Melbourne: Arcadia, pb., 302pp., Aus$39.95 A hoicked-up small boy sits astride a yoked-up heavy horse, while three sun-stained men smile at posterity. Hairy hooves press good grass, lush trees shade old ridges, and though the cover is black-and-white we feel the burden of that 1940s sun, the texture of… 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…
My Spectator Australia review of Growing Wild by Michael Wilding
My Spectator Australia review of Michael Wilding’s memoir, Growing Wild, was published on the 3rd of June – link here: https://spectator.com.au/2017/06/class-observation/
Dancing into darkness – Holbein’s Dance of Death
DANCING INTO DARKNESS The Dance of Death, Hans Holbein, London: Penguin Classics, 2016, 184pps., pb., £9.99 If age is synonymous with canonicity – an assumption increasingly questioned – Hans Holbein’s 1523-5 Dance of Death qualifies as ‘classic’ on that score alone. But his striking work is also defining in deeper ways, epitomising the Reformation, when… Continue reading
Into the valley – Michael Wilding’s In the Valley of the Weed
Into the Valley In the Valley of the Weed, Michael Wilding, Melbourne: Arcadia, 2016, $29.95 “Old radicals become quietist” a character in Valley of the Weed tells Plant, the appropriately-named private detective investigating the disappearance of a high-profile academic. “They stop socialising. Stay at home and surrender to the comforting millenarian conviction that change will… Continue reading
Dr. Johnson in Scotland – An Englishman in his Near Abroad
DR. JOHNSON IN SCOTLAND – AN ENGLISHMAN IN HIS NEAR ABROAD Samuel Johnson was nearly sixty-four when he made an unexpected journey. One day in 1773, the internationally-renowned lexicographer, essayist, poet, and novelist, who somehow combined being one of the great thinkers of Europe with being a personification of bluff Englishness, suddenly switched his great… Continue reading