Last year I was taken by Max-Otto Ludwig Löwenstein‘s wartime memoir, Accidental Journey. You may remember his family were rich Jews and he went to Cambridge before being sent round and about as an enemy alien and joining the British army.
Saint Piran and the Visitation
A full fifty years had St. Piran dwelt among the sandhills between Perranzabuloe and the sea before any big rush of saints began to pour into Cornwall: for ’twas not till the old man had discovered tin for us that they sprang up thick as blackberries all over the county; so that in a way… Continue reading Saint Piran and the Visitation
Hare and Tortoise
Die Kaiserin
A colour television in the 1960s cost as much as a new, I suppose small, car. A large Dover Sole in a restaurant cost 12/6 or half a crown. I have bought a TV for £125 (the TV licence is £175) and it does everything except brush my teeth. On the other hand I don’t… Continue reading Die Kaiserin
Leopard Changes Spots
Omnia Vincit Amor
A Proposal
When Don Calogero’s arrival was announced at exactly half-past four the Prince had not yet finished his toilet; he sent a message asking the Mayor to wait a minute in his study and went on placidly embellishing himself. He plastered his hair with Lemo-liscioy Atkinson’s‘ Lime Juice and Glycerine’, a dense whitish lotion which arrived… Continue reading A Proposal
Pictures in a Picture
Il Gattopardo
“ Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.” The daily recital of the Rosary was over. For half an hour the steady voice of the Prince had recalled the Glorious and the Sorrowful Mysteries; for half an hour other voices had interwoven a lilting hum from which, now and again, would chime some unlikely word;… Continue reading Il Gattopardo
Moscow Underground
I would not have bought this book. It is a Christmas present. Why not? I have never heard of Catherine Merridale and never read anything by Simon Sebag Montefiori. I know people who bought his Jerusalem: a Biography but none who finished it ; more than eight hundred pages and more than twenty-five hours as… Continue reading Moscow Underground
