Some books… This post is a review of some books about British Artists, mostly women, by women: Breaking Free Virginia Nicholson’s Among the Bohemians tells the extraordinary history of a group of artists and writers who overthrew conventions in both their art and their lives. Written by one of the family (her grandparents were Clive… Continue reading Daring Daubers
Tag: History
Finding Ludwig
In Search of Beethoven: A Personal Journey by John Suchet (Elliott & Thompson, 2024; 302 pages) Between Two Stools The journalist and broadcaster John Suchet has written several books about Ludwig van Beethoven, reflecting a lifelong love of the great composer’s music, bordering on the obsessive. So he has written extensively about Beethoven and while… Continue reading Finding Ludwig
Losing Your Marbles
The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions by Adam Kuper (2023, Profile Books, 416 pages) Jump in… Holiday Souvenirs As Western Europeans forged trade routes and “discovered” New Worlds in Africa, Asia and America, planting their flags and striding over their colonies, so the first huge accumulations of cultural artefacts were… Continue reading Losing Your Marbles
Firestarters
The Prometheans: John Martin and the Generation that Stole the Future by Max Adams Published by Quercus, 2009, 300 pp. There are young radicals calling for the overthrow of the system; here is art and literature stirring up popular unrest, and incurring a culture war backlash; and bewildering advances in science and technology giving people… Continue reading Firestarters
Teaching the garden to weed itself
What do you get if you cross an unconventional economist with a talented journalist? If the economist if Steven D Levitt and the writer is Stephen J Dubner, then the result is a series of best-selling books and a hugely popular podcast. Along the way it will entertain and astonish a lot of people, make… Continue reading Teaching the garden to weed itself
Other Worlds
A History of Delusions: The Glass King, a Substitute Husband and a Walking Corpse by Victoria Shepherd (2022, Oneworld Publications) Distorted Mirrors A book of famous case histories of delusional individuals, could so easily become a distasteful sideshow, like visiting a Hall of Mirrors, or paying your penny to gawp at the inmates in Bedlam.… Continue reading Other Worlds
When I was Ten
Jump to it! Your World of Adventure – in Living Colour! I am writing this on my eldest grandson’s 10th birthday. What was I doing when I was ten? One thing I am certain of: I was reading Tell Me Why magazine, which may be the source of most of the general knowledge that I… Continue reading When I was Ten
Africa is not what we think
The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free by Alex Perry (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2015) The “Rift” is … … the Rift Valley that cuts through central and north-east Africa, a vast region which was the cradle of human pre-history. It is where our hominid ancestors lived and died, leaving traces – like Lucy in the… Continue reading Africa is not what we think
Charged with meaning
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree. Ezra Pound (How To Read, 1931) The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (Vintage 2020/2022) Who write’s the dictionary? Who decides which words are included and which excluded? Whose language is it, anyway? This wonderful novel is anchored in the real… Continue reading Charged with meaning
Stories tumbled by the tides of time
Philip Hoare’s digressions and tangents balloon into sea monsters, bigger than the narrative boat we thought he was steering.