London Grip readers may remember Bernard Green’s previous reminiscences about his early life on the Surrey-Hampshire border. Here he returns with a new recollection – this time couched in verse…
history
James Roderick Burns has no doubts about the importance of Mayakovsky’s epic poem about Lenin in a new Smokestack edition by Rosy Carrick
Sands Film Club recently screened Alessandro Blasetti’s 1860 as part of its 1934 cinema season. Blasetti’s pioneering film has been credited with introducing a number of cinematic techniques which would become calling cards of Italy’s Neo-Realist directors, such as De Sica, Visconti and Rossellini, during the 1940’s and 1950’s.
When Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany on 3rd September 1939, the country he led was by no means united in its opposition to Hitler. The English aristocracy numbered many Nazi sympathisers in its ranks, who would have welcomed the introduction of a regime modelled on the Third Reich into their country during the 1930’s.
D A Prince reviews a poetry anthology which commemorates the 800th anniversary of the Charter of the Forest – a companion to Magna Carta that should probably be better known
It is overwhelming to enter this striking twelfth century London church which provides the delightful setting for this touring production. We are inside the Norman and Gothic architecture of English history. This is a strong visual for Shakespeare’s propaganda play which scholars acknowledge as the rewriting of Richard Plantagenet’s life to please Shakespeare’s Tudor patrons.
Dunkirk has emerged as 2017’s summer blockbuster movie. The director Christopher Nolan has been widely praised for his ability to immerse film-goers in the terrifying experience of soldiers, sailors and airmen involved in the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) by land, sea and air between 26th May and 4th June, 1940.
A new glass museum opened last autumn in the North of France and it is a jewel. It is centred in Sars-Poteries in the Avesnois. This is a rural setting which once housed glass-making factories from 1800-1937.
Overlooked for centuries, her paintings were often wrongly attributed to her father, Orazio Gentileschi. In the same period her work sank to a level of obscurity equal to that one of her greatest influences, Caravaggio. His reputation was restored in the 1920’s. Artemisia Gentileschi had to wait a little longer.
Posterity remembers Emma Hamilton as the mistress of Nelson. The reality is her achievements in the society salon were in their way as brave and out of the ordinary as his naval exploits.
James Roderick Burns finds Geraldine Paine’s new narrative collection to be a timely reminder of traditional poetic virtues
Carla Scarano D’Antonio reviews Michael Bartholomew-Biggs’s poetic sketch of a family history which is based as much on imagination as on evidence.
By Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, history, poetry reviews, year 2017 0 • Tags: books, Carla Scarano D’Antonio, history, poetry