Islamic Arts

(by J Bloom & S Blair)

Despite ongoing conventions, Islamic Art (an extremely wide term, used here for convenience and coherence) flourished beyond the merely decorative or doctrinal.

This sumptuous Phaidon edition is a good entrée to the flowers of the various Muslim empires in history.

'Coronation of Ogodei, 1229' by Rashid al-Din, 14C.

‘Coronation of Ogodei, 1229’ by Rashid al-Din, 14C.

Great Museums: The Art of Islam at the Met and the Louvre • Connecticut Public Television

Opulent And Apolitical: The Art Of The Met's Islamic Galleries : NPR

 

 

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A Savage War of Peace

(by Alistair Horne)

Terrific, informative, thrilling account of the French being kicked off the Barbary Coast.

I don’t know if Algiers is better off, but at least they own it.

Algerian War collage by Madame Grinderche

Algerian War collage by Madame Grinderche

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The Life of Thomas More

(by Peter Ackroyd)

Highly readable and balanced life (and death) of the contentious, hair-shirted and many faceted ‘man for all seasons’ (omnium horarum).

Beatified but no saint, an intolerant believer and a survivor who sacrificed himself on principle, he remains an enigma and a controversial one.

This book comes close to doing justice to all sides and all sides of the man and one can’t do much better than that.

The famous 1527 portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger

The famous 1527 portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger

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The Children’s Hospital

(C. Adrian)
O you lovely book!  From the first, gasping, rolling hurtling minutes, through the green fire and the black death to the final sad biblical parade, I love all of your pages.
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The Browning Version

(Terence Rattigan)

Rattigan liked to focus on the pitiless pitied; still, he had a great (though now out of fashion) talent for structure, style, character and conventional exposition. It is what makes his plays so enjoyable. Andrew Crocker-Harris is Mr Chipping without the charm, Mr Kotter without the humour and Miss Brodie without the balls. He has been played by Eric Portman, Michael Redgrave, Albert Finney and others but few have got his essential character entirely right (NB the Varnished Culture never saw Portman in the role). After all, the impression he gives is that of only mild surprise at being referred to as ‘the Himmler of the lower fifth’.




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The Masters

(by C. P. Snow)

Snow wrote about what he knew: machinations at Oxbridge and Westminster. This one, the 4th in a loose sequence of 9 novels known as Strangers and Brothers, is perhaps the best, a somewhat pompous but intriguing deconstruction of a college election which humanises the Dons and explains the politics.

photo of Keble by Diliff

 

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Provence and the Côte D’Azur

(by J McCulloch)

The South of France may have slipped down the rankings of getaways for the great and good but it is still a superb region in which to luxuriate. This beautiful guide is not only packed with information; it is packed with the right information, first-hand and canny and laced with photos that are almost better than being there.

Cap Ferrat (photo attributed o Berthold Werner)

Cap Ferrat (photo attributed to Berthold Werner)

 

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The Sheltering Sky

(Paul Bowles)

We cannot in this instance agree with the Big V’s view that this book is “an utterly ridiculous performance, devoid of talent.”[1] Bowles did admire Nabokov and his reaction to this verdict upon his most famous book makes for nice speculation. But then, VN was never a fan of the existentialists.

Port and Kit Moresby try a Saharan trek to salvage their loveless marriage and end up destroyed by kif, heat, sexual assault, typhoid and catatonia, a fairly accurate reflection (death from typhoid aside) of the real life of Paul and Jane Bowles. Appalling experiences related in commonplace terms, Bowles nevertheless manages to convey the ravages imposed on the facile tourist by a deep and pitiless culture.

[1] Vladimir Nabokov to James Laughlin 27/4/50 (from Selected Letters 1940-1977).

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The Caretaker

(by Harold Pinter)

Pinter-esque power games, full of menace, pauses, hopelessness and procrastination; we’re all still waiting for the weather to break in order to collect those papers from Sidcup! (Jonathon Pryce played Davies aka Jenkins in Adelaide in March 2012; P ‘liked’, L did not). We both commend the film version with Donald Pleasance, Alan Bates and Robert Shaw.)

“Sleep well?”

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Paris: A Guide to the City’s Creative Heart

(by Janelle McCulloch)

May be an image of monument and outdoors

A sumptuous celebration and guidebook in one, this is the refreshing literary equivalent of taking Dom Pérignon with Coupe Hélène. Janelle McCulloch isn’t just a style guru; she is an informed omnivore of culture (see her magnificent website, A Library of Design).

Louvre_2007_02_24_c

In this book she presents the world’s favourite city in an easy, informed way, helping newbies negotiate and appreciate the profusion of arrondisements and letting old hands savour the incomparable glamour and high style of the City of Lights. No point in buying only one copy as a gift because you’ll never give it away.

Sacre-coeur-paris

Notre_Dame

 

 

 

14 November 2015: Reports are coming in that Islamic Terrorists have carried out a group of apparently co-ordinated terror attacks in Paris, with well over a hundred people dead.  Perhaps there will be calls for a Counter Crusade?

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