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.
history
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…
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
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.
It was the Kingdom of Naples that gave Emma the chance to transform herself into an artist, society lady and skilled operator at the court of Queen Maria Carolina, wife of King Ferdinand IV, its reigning monarch.
Three decades after the miners’ strike of 1984, families in northern England are riven because relatives crossed the picket line.
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.
by Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • books, history, poetry reviews, year 2018 • Tags: books, history, poetry, Wendy Klein • 0 Comments
Wendy Klein commends Martin Malone’s new chapbook which revisits the first World War in the centenary year of its ending