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Jerusalem/Simon Sebag Montefiore

The biblical rights to Palestine so interested me that – after  reading Israel – a concise history – I listened to an audio book version of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s history of Jerusalem. Jerusalem lies at the heart of the conflict between Israel and the Arabs countries. It [...]

March 24, 2023 // 0 Comments

Israel/Daniel Gordis

I have just finished Daniel Gordis’ concise but thorough history of Israel from the time of Zionist Theodore Herzl to the present day. It’s written from the Israeli point of view but aware of the country’s failings and sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians. The journey from Herzl to [...]

March 19, 2023 // 0 Comments

The Other Side of the Hill

The title of the book is taken from the Duke of Wellington who always stressed the importance of knowing what your enemy is up to. The writer is the distinguished military historian and strategist Basil Liddell Hart, who advocated fast-moving armoured divisions striking quickly and deeply into the [...]

January 28, 2023 // 0 Comments

Stars and spies/ Christopher Andrew and Julius Green

There is always the difficulty that any historical account will be so dense and detailed that the reader cannot easily absorb it. No such difficulty here as the authors in tracing the interrelationship between the arts and espionage always keep the narrative the right side of entertaining. They [...]

January 11, 2023 // 0 Comments

Adapting classic books to film

A post on whether books or films are the best way to appreciate World War Two generated an interesting discussion which I would like to extend to classic literature. Over the so-called festive period I saw film adaptations of Jane Austen’s Emma and Charles Dickens Great Expectations. Emma starred [...]

December 29, 2022 // 0 Comments

Reappraising Jane Austen

In a previous post I was rather negative about the Jane Austen novel Persuasion.   In last week ‘s edition of Radio 4’s In Our Time various academics discussed its importance and made many good points that I had missed on the characterisation, observation and depiction of Bath. Here is a link [...]

December 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Guns at Last Light/Rick Atkinson

The Guns at Last Light is the final volume of the Liberation Trilogy detailing the American military World War Two campaigns of North Africa, Sicily and Italy and in this book the Normandy Landings and their aftermath. It is immensely detailed: a blow by blow, day by day, account with exhaustive [...]

December 17, 2022 // 0 Comments

Bournville/Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe is emerging as the chronicler of our times. In his latest novel Bournville he traces the origins of Brexit back to VE Day – and subsequent noteworthy events thereafter – as seen through the eyes of the Lamb family who live in the Bournville suburb of Birmingham an utopian [...]

November 16, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Romantic/William Boyd

You never what to expect in a William Boyd novel but – like Any Human Heart – this is a sweeping cradle-to-grave story of Cashel Ross set in the nineteenth century. Cashel was born in Cork. He was told his parents had died when their boat capsized and he was brought up by his Scottish [...]

November 3, 2022 // 0 Comments

Petworth Literary Festival/Simon Sebag Montefiore

Yesterday I attended the Petworth Literary Festival where Simon Sebag Montefiore was interviewed by Davide Soskin about his new book The World.    This is a history of the world through families. His thesis is that the treatment of history is too narrow – whether of a country or a [...]

October 31, 2022 // 0 Comments

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