My favourite read of 2023. A chance find. Once I had started reading, everything else was put on hold. I don't know where to start. There is so much tMy favourite read of 2023. A chance find. Once I had started reading, everything else was put on hold. I don't know where to start. There is so much to talk about. Frederick Forsyth never intended to be a writer at all. He wanted to travel and see the world. Became a journalist. Then a foreign correspondent for Reuters, then for the BBC in Africa. Back in London out of a job and flat broke, in a friend's flat in January 1970 on his portable typewriter, wrote The Day of the Jackal in thirty-five days. Published the next year, and two years later made into a film....more
Reading 1969 diary first, and 1965. Wonderful stuff, interesting wide variety of people, the times, and places. Working my way through it. I added thiReading 1969 diary first, and 1965. Wonderful stuff, interesting wide variety of people, the times, and places. Working my way through it. I added this to the read section while not yet finished reading so as able to add to a review. This has to be five stars.
Friday, 14 March 1969 Diana told of how shocked she was by Evelyn Waugh when asked by a pedestrian in an unknown town the way to the station would make up false instructions and sent the man off to miss his train. 'But you can't do that, Evelyn.' 'I always do,' he replied. (Lady Diana Cooper (1892 - 1986), legendary beauty, actress, ambassadress and author.) LDC looks an interesting character worth investigating who appears throughout these diaries....more
I enjoy these Pelican Book brief overview introductions on a given subject. In this one, Contemporary British Art by Herbert Read there are numerous coI enjoy these Pelican Book brief overview introductions on a given subject. In this one, Contemporary British Art by Herbert Read there are numerous compressed statements in this compact publication to unpack for one to wax wide.
One subject is Britain and Surrealism. Surrealism on the Continent was objective, social-political statement. Surrealism is naturally subjective in the British, hiding in plain sight. Absurdist sense of humour. Alice in Wonderland and so on.
I may come back and expand on the many other points raised by the author, an historian and art critic. An Art Critic, keep in mind is just that, an art critic....more
I wouldn't know where to start on this. It's staggering. As I was getting to the end of the last chapter, 'The Messy Afterlife of Colonialism', I starI wouldn't know where to start on this. It's staggering. As I was getting to the end of the last chapter, 'The Messy Afterlife of Colonialism', I started reading 'Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon', by Gijs van Hensbergen who quotes Orwell's essay, 'Looking Back at the Spanish War', published 1943, his scathing analysis of Britain's foreign policy, stating, Britain could "foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypoctritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. . . . Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time."
If Britain had moved to stop Franco and Fascism in Spain it would have sent the message to Hitler then and not the inevitable later. But then, having read 'My Silent War', the autobiography by Kim Philby shows how clueless and arrogant are the Ruling Class. High appointment to position by old school tie rather than knowledge, experience and aptitude.
The chapter in Inglorious Empire, ch.4, Divide Et Impera, was the most disturbing for me to read. The Colonial tactic of divide and conquer, is where the cold blooded evil lies. It embeds the deep problems that can't be resolved once the Colonialists have gone....more
