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
history
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.
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
John Lucas finds multiple reasons to recommend this memoir by Gail Holst-Warhaft which is studded through with her own accomplished poetry and also gives a shrewdly observant account of post-war Greek history
James Roderick Burns notes that Michael Crowley has taken some risks in order to negotiate a way through conflicting themes and historical viewpoints in his new collection
Le Corbusier has mostly gone down in history as a visionary Swiss urban planner. For the thousands forcibly evicted from District Six in Cape Town, he has a more sinister resonance as the proponent of “the surgical method” – as mentioned in the notorious apartheid-era Group Areas Act – of sweeping away what he saw as chaos and disorder.
A New Life for the Riding-Crop-Handle Maker; Sarah Lawson reminds us of a popular account of an immigrant’s experience which has – perhaps undeservedly – fallen out of the public eye
Bernard Green offers another of his distinctive reminiscences about his early life in post-war Surrey. .
Bernard Green has already given London Grip readers his memoir of Alf’s Café: here now is his “prequel” about dramatic incidents in Farnham in the 1940s…
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.
By Jane McChrystal • history, politics, year 2017 • Tags: history, Jane McChrystal, politics