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“If not quite a platform, a play is certainly a plinth, a small eminence from which to address the world, hold forth about one’s concerns or the concerns of one’s characters. But not to preach. Writing a play I have never tried to hide the sound of my own voice. It hasn’t always been where an audience or a critic has thought to find it, and certainly not always in the mouth of the leading character. It’s often a divided voice or a dissenting one; two things (at lest) are being said and I am not always sure which one I agree with. But that is one reason I write plays: one can speak with a divided voice.” –Alan Bennett, excerpt from 2 October 2018 Diary entry, LRB 3 January 2019
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My last 5 posts
- The Last Ten Books Tag January 3, 2019
- Turning January 1, 2019
- A fountain of youth December 19, 2018
- Jumping right in November 30, 2018
- Coasting November 29, 2018
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Category Archives: History
Brueghelian Obsession
The fourth and last in a series of novels involving the search for lost art. But a new slant here: this novel is for adults. Headlong, Michael Frayn (1999), Picador, 342 pp. Remember that Rod Serling story, where the Nazi … Continue reading
Posted in Art, History, Mystery
Tagged Michael Frayn, Pieter Breughel the Elder, W H Auden
2 Comments
Unexpected endings
Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses, Bess Lovejoy (2013) Lovejoy gives us a list like no other: what happened to the mortal remains (bones, ashes, or otherwise) of historical figures, from Alexander the Great to Hunter S. … Continue reading
History for the curious
Frances and Joseph Gies, Women in the Middle Ages (1978) A brief review here. Gies and Gies, famous for their intelligent books on Medieval Europe, provide a guide to the lives of women from the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the … Continue reading
Posted in History
5 Comments
Spiritualism and the Mafia
Norman Lewis, Jackdaw Cake (1985) Here’s a life for you: Raised by your grandfather and three odd aunts. Reclaimed by your spiritualist parents when the aunts go doolally. Married into a Sicilian family (probably mafiosi), then separated from your partner by WWII … Continue reading
Bigamous reading
When I haven’t the energy to read Proust, I read something else. In that respect, I’m no different from anyone else. But the other day my daughter commented on how strange it was that I was sitting on the couch reading … Continue reading
Posted in Adventure, Graphic Novel, History, Humorous, Little Free Library, Mystery, reading, Travel book
Tagged Allie Brosh, Donald Culross Peattie, PG Wodehouse, RA Dick, Robin Sloan, Wilbur Bassett
3 Comments
Temporary obsession: AR
My latest obsession started two months ago with Christina Hardyment’s Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint’s Trunk, an excellent study of the sources, both geographic and human, for his famous books, with a satisfying number of illustrations as well. Fans probably … Continue reading
Posted in Adventure, Artist profile, History, Mystery, reading
Tagged Arthur Ransome, Christina Hardyment, Roland Chambers
7 Comments
This and that and some other things
For the past 3 weeks, it hasn’t been Radio WTWP (wall-to-wall Proust, with a tip of the hat to Prof. Peter Schickele) on my reading shelf. Here’s some other stuff I’ve been clearing out: Desmond Seward’s The Demon’s Brood, a 300-page bare-bones … Continue reading
