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Tag Archives: history

An honest pisstake

Friday, September 8, 2017

Pissing Figures: 1280–2014 by Jean-Claude Lebensztejn (transl. Jeff Nagy) David Zwirner Books, 168pp, £11.95 . From a Cimabue cherub to Szydlowski/-lowska’s Lenin, simply everyone is pissing. In pen and ink, paint on canvas, plaster, wood, stone, polymer, block prints, engraving, chamber pots, aquatints, dishware, film, manuscripts, inlay, public statuary, trick-photography, and in a Japanese video [...]

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NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, February 6, 2017

. The telephone has a tendency to render the girl operators left-eared. — The Nelson Evening Mail, July 4 1908 . Eight wickets for eight runs is the worst batting collapse in Twenty20 international cricket. St Blaise is the patron saint of sore throats, and of knitting. Estonian literature suffers from a dearth of stories [...]

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Intellectual MOT

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Some thoughts on the enquiring mind, slang, and judging a book by its cover - in correspondence with Tia Goonaratna. – For The Sunday Leader

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Battle

Friday, October 14, 2016

for Harry . When Edward was king, Harold, an English earl, and his horsemen rode to Bosham, to the church there. Harold then crossed the sea, his sails full of wind, and came into the domain of Count Guy. Guy took Harold prisoner, and leading him away to Beaurain, held him captive there. Harold and Guy [...]

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Egyptomania

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Review of three books on Ancient Egypt: Egypt: People, Pharaohs, Gods, by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen; Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy, by Ronald H. Fritze; and Writings from Ancient Egypt, by Toby Wilkinson. – For The Spectator

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Fools’ Charter

Monday, March 16, 2015

A trip to see all four surviving originals of the Magna Carta. – For The Spectator

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A motto for mine own generation

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

habitabamus domum magnam

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Eight debut novels

Monday, September 1, 2014

Currently sitting at 12 to 1 for this year’s Booker Prize, first-time novelist Paul Kingsnorth has set the cat among the pigeons through the disarmingly original expedient of submitting his offering in a fictional language. Composed in what Kingsnorth calls the ‘shadow tongue’ of ‘eald anglisc’, The Wake (Unbound 365pp £16.99) explores one angle of [...]

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theASHtray, vol.13

Saturday, April 28, 2012

David Walliams does Roald Dahl, AA Gill does Mary Beard, and I do children’s literature, Little Britain, Donald Sturrock, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Sunday Times, Romans, the Daily Mail, Cicero, Bettany Hughes, Time Team, the Cambridge Latin Course, constipation, movie posters, The Ides of March, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The English Patient, [...]

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