Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 12, 2022

Europe Since Napoleon by David Thomson

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  Some time ago and in relation to a different book, I wrote a review that in essence began, “Occasionally, just occasionally, one comes acr...
Monday, March 28, 2022

G. F. Watts by G. K. Chesterton

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GK meets GF sounds like the title of one of those mid-twentieth century albums when a producer with an eye for a buck teamed up some ancient...
Monday, January 24, 2022

According To Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge

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On the surface, According To Queeney by Beryl Bainbridge might appear to be firmly rooted in the genre of historical fiction. Its cover port...
Tuesday, October 26, 2021

SPQR by Mary Beard

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  I have just finished Mary Beard’s SPQR. I have just started Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. The connection? Susan Sontag’s essay de...
Wednesday, May 5, 2021

The Anarchy by William Dalrymple

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  Occasionally, quite rarely, in fact, one reads a book so powerful that it is impossible to review, at least until the dust its disturbance...
Saturday, January 30, 2021

SPQR by Mary Beard

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I have just finished Mary Beard’s SPQR. I have just started Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation. The connection? Susan Sontag’s essay deal...
Monday, October 26, 2020

The Shores of the Adriatic – The Austrian Side – The Künstenland, Istria, and Dalmatia by F Hamilton Jackson 1908

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  Interesting to read this account of a journey – not the author’s first to the area – while travelling through part of it. The writing make...
Monday, October 19, 2020

Theodoric the Goth: Barbarian Champion of Civilization by Thomas Hodgkin (1897)

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The fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian era are often listed as part of what we dismissively label as the “Dark Ages”. These times sa...
Saturday, October 3, 2020

Mary Beard’s Pompeii

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  Mary Beard’s Pompeii succeeds in several quite different and sometimes surprising ways. This is a guidebook, a history, a survey of social...
Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Stalin by Edvard Radzinski

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Edvard Radzinski’s Stalin is literally and figuratively an enormous work. But perhaps a quarter of a million words is still insufficient to ...
Thursday, September 17, 2020

Crown of Blood, The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey by Nicola Tallis

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When they advance, pawns become queens. But to advance, they usually need support from a bishop or a knight from behind the walls of a castl...
Thursday, September 10, 2020

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

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When reading history, it's always instructive and insightful to step back and consider the “big picture”. Detail, though essential, inde...
Saturday, August 15, 2020

The Naples Riviera by Herbert M Vaughan

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The Naples Riviera by Herbert M Vaughan is a travel book published in 1908. I read it recently during a trip to Naples, itself. When using o...
Thursday, July 30, 2020

Elizabeth – The Forgotten Years by John Guy

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Myths are best served exploded, otherwise they can over-inflate and thus hide the substance of any dish. And if that dish be the national c...
Saturday, July 25, 2020

A Tale Of Love And Darkness by Amos Oz

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In A Tale Of Love And Darkness Amos Oz writes an autobiography of his early years. Though written from a much later perspective, this memoi...