IN THE ULTRA-WEST Derek Turner Drowned drumlins swarmed in the brilliant bay, and ravens like those that plagued Saint Patrick croaked from the chasm below my feet as they rolled lazily half a mile above County Mayo. The ravens’ harsh call was an onomatopoeic reminder of my present eminence, Croagh Patrick, the 2,510 foot cone… Continue reading
Posts Tagged → Derek Turner
Testing for humanity – The Plague Dogs revisited
Testing for humanity – The Plague Dogs revisited I came across by chance recently a DVD of The Plague Dogs, a 1982 animation of Richard Adams’ bestselling 1977 novel. I was catapulted immediately back to childhood, when I had read the book shortly after publication, with a sense of distress and anger I can still… Continue reading
Borderline personality disorder – a review of The Education of Hector Villa
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER “Roads fade out before you reach the line, And the signposts disappear” Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Borderland The Education of Hector Villa Chilton Williamson, Jr., Rockford, Illinois: Chronicles Press, 2012, pb. 208 Native New Yorker Chilton Williamson, Jr. has an impressive pedigree as conservative intellectual, as former history editor for St. Martin’s Press,… Continue reading
Journey into guilt – Detour (1945)
JOURNEY INTO GUILT Detour (1945) The term film noir is loose and sometimes controversial, but for many people Detour could encapsulate the genre. It is American, it is shot in black-and-white, it is a thriller, and it focuses on a semi-criminal to criminal demimonde that is the obverse of American optimism – a seedy stratum… Continue reading
Modernity in a medieval city – “Modern Masters in Print” at Lincoln
MODERNITY IN A MEDIEVAL CITY Modern Masters in Print, Usher Gallery, Lincoln, until 30 March, admission free Just down the hill from the superb Lincoln Cathedral is the Usher Gallery, the rather unlikely setting for this peripatetic V&A exhibition, which quit London last year in a flurry of hyperbole, and gave rise to a BBC… Continue reading
Fortunate and unfortunate isles
FORTUNATE AND UNFORTUNATE ISLES Pocket Atlas of Remote Islands—Fifty Islands I Have Not Visited and Never Will Judith Schalansky, London, New York: Penguin, 2012. 240 pp The West is writing over all the world’s white spaces. The unrolling triumph of Occidental enlightenment and exploration has meant the near-complete charting of the planet—conquest of the tallest peaks,… Continue reading
The English Wändervögel
THE ENGLISH WÄNDERVÖGEL Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper, London: John Murray, 2010 On December 9th, 1933, an eighteen-year-old miscreant rushed through the rain at Tower Bridge to catch the Stadtholder Willem, about to hoist anchor and leave for Rotterdam. His luggage was light—a little money, a few letters of introduction, a knapsack, a sturdy… Continue reading
The once-weres and could-have-beens of Europe
THE ONCE-WERES AND COULD-HAVE-BEENS OF EUROPE Vanished Kingdoms—The History of Half-forgotten Europe Norman Davies. London: Allen Lane, 2011. 800 pp, £30 hob When I visited the Naval Museum in Madrid several years ago, I took away as a souvenir a facsimile of a coloured 1756 naval manual illustration entitled Banderas que las naciones arbolan en… Continue reading
Land hunger, land anger
Land hunger, land anger The Field (1990) The Field opens in dramatic style. The setting is the rural west of Ireland, in 1965. A father and son are seen silhouetted at the top of a cliff, having dragged there a strange and heavy load – a dead donkey stallion – which they then precipitate over… Continue reading
Reconnecting with Cavafy
RECONNECTING WITH CAVAFY Shades of Love – Photographs Inspired by the Poems of C. P. Cavafy Dimitris Yeros, poems translated by David Connolly, Insight Editions, San Francisco, 2010, 165 pps, $75 Your nightingales, your songs, are living still And them the death that clutches all things cannot kill.(Callimachus) This volume landed in my postbox burdened… Continue reading