Tag Archives: Arts & Literature

Previews: Country Life Magazine – August 14, 2024

Country Life Magazine (August 14, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Save the Albion Cow’ – It’s rarer than a Giant Panda; Old houses, new technology; Hot and Steamy – Why the pressure cooker is back and Whizz kids – What made Elizabeth I, Brunel and Nelson special…

Breed for victory

Our treasured native livestock breeds are in danger of being lost, yet they have a crucial role to play, believes Kate Green

Levelling up

Anyone waiting with trepidations for the A-level results should take heart from the likes of Nelson and Brunel, says Alice Loxton

If walls could talk

Old houses with poor wifi need not be denied new gadgets, from wireless lighting to kettles that can be switched on remotely. Julie Harding taps her screen

What makes you click?

From a hollowed-out cow to autofocus and gyro-stabilised cameras, clever ideas continue to transform wildlife photography. Amie Elizabeth White takes a look down the lense.

Full steam ahead

Neil Buttery fires up the pressure cooker, back in our kitchens and tenderising those bones

Paint your wagon

Sturdy, hardworking and now prized for their rarity, farm wagons were key to rural life in times past. Jack Watkins rolls out the surviving examples.

Country Life’s tech commandments

Follow thou Toby Keel’s wise advice for digital life and thou shalt not be shunned in society

Planting for the future

The new generation is building on a fine legacy of gardening and travel at Bryngwyn Hall in Powys, where Caroline Donald wanders among trees gathered from far-flung countries

Foraging

John Wright sets off into the woods in search of meaty rot fungi, the magnificent chicken of the woods and its cousin, joy-inducing hen of the woods

Waiter! My soup is cold

It might be an acquired taste, but gazpacho — recipe of your choice — is worth tasting again. Tom Parker Bowles dips his spoon into a Spanish favourite

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – August 19, 2024

An illustration of a man on a beach.

The New Yorker (August 12, 2024): The latest issue features Charles Addams’s “Ascent” – A fresh printing of an age-old gag.

Funny/Unfunny: The Archival Comedy Issue

Do jokes express our otherwise taboo wishes? Or does everyone just need a pie in the face? By Emma Allen

In Search of the World’s Funniest Joke

The semi-serious science of why we laugh. By Tad Friend

Charlie Chaplin and the Business of Living

Chaplin’s epochal fame has tended to obscure the influences and instincts that infused his art with childlike purity.

London Review Of Books – August 15, 2024 Preview

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London Review of Books (LRB) – August 7 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘Henry James Hot-Air Balloon’ – “The Prefaces” by  Henry James; Trivialized to Death – “Reading Genesis” by Marilynne Robinson; Different for Girls By Jean McNicol

Trivialised to Death

Reading Genesis 
by Marilynne Robinson.

By James Butler

The first time​ the man heard God, he uprooted his entire life, though he was very old. Then God appeared to him in person, an event which would embarrass later thinkers. God made the man an impossible promise in the shape of a son. His wife was ninety, and she laughed. When the child arrived, it was hardly unreasonable to think it a miracle. They named the child after the laughter.

Just say it, Henry

The Prefaces 
by Henry James, edited by Oliver Herford.

By Colin Burrow

In 1904​ Henry James’s agent negotiated with the American publisher Charles Scribner’s Sons to produce a collected edition of his works. The New York Edition of the Novels and Tales of Henry James duly appeared in 1907-9. It presented revised texts of both James’s shorter and longer fiction, with freshly written prefaces to each volume. It didn’t include everything: ‘I want to quietly disown a few things by not thus supremely adopting them,’ as James put it. The ‘disowned’ works included some early gems such as The Europeans. The labour of ‘supremely adopting’ the stuff he still thought worthy was grinding. He worked on the new prefaces, which he described as ‘freely colloquial and even, perhaps, as I may say, confidential’ (though James’s notion of the ‘freely colloquial’ is perhaps not everyone’s) during the years 1905 to 1909. In some respects, the venture was not a success. ‘Vulgarly speaking,’ James said of the New York Edition, ‘it doesn’t sell.’

Different for Girls

By Jean McNicol

A week​ before the start of the Paris Olympics, Shoko Miyata, the 19-year-old captain of the Japanese women’s gymnastics team, was forced to withdraw from the competition by her national association. She had been reported to the Japan Gymnastics Association for smoking and drinking (on separate occasions, once for each offence). The president of the JGA, Tadashi Fujita, announced that Miyata had been sent home, and bowed deeply. 

Previews: Country Life Magazine – August 7, 2024

Country Life Magazine (August 7, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Huts for Heroes’ – Where adventures start…

A consolation and pleasure

Could Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, be considered an architect? He thought so — and Michael Hall tends to agree

The legacy

Carla Passino salutes the modest Henry Tate, whose name will live forever in the art world

The secret history of flowers

Healing, revealing, defence against thieving, our wildflowers’ names tell the story of our ancestors. John Lewis-Stempel reads the leaves

Up where the air is clear

An Antarctic explorer’s base or a Scottish fisherman’s shelter, the humble hut is a crucial element in stirring tales. Robin Ashcroft opens the doors

You rang, your majesty?

Even the most distasteful jobs could offer compensations to savvy servants in the Royal Household, finds Susan Jenkins

Going Dutch

The great Netherlandish masters have no equal in admirers and influence, believes Michael Hall

Harriet Hastings’s favourite painting

The biscuiteer picks a haunting scene in a lonely hotel room

Against the Grain

Carla Carlisle pays tribute to the memory of a farmer, honest broadcaster and dear friend

Bottoms up

What do the white behinds of rabbits, deer and foxes really say? Laura Parker deciphers scuts, rumps and rears

Summer’s last stand

Securing the harvest is the weather watcher’s concern in August, says Lia Leendertz

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell wraps up in style ready to hit the beach

Interiors

A party-ready sitting room and stylish touches for a home office

London Life

  • Rooftop cocktails
  • Wiggy Hindmarch, wine cellars and rosebay willowherb
  • William Hosie’s capital characters
  • Richard MacKichan on the British Museum Reading Room’s return

Presiding spirits

The fourth generation to nurture the garden of Glin Castle, Co Limerick, Ireland, is doing her predecessors proud. Caroline Donald explores a windswept haven beside the Shannon

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson conjures up treats with courgette flowers

It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you do with it

Even the tiniest town garden can offer views and wildlife to rival open countryside, believes city dweller Jonathan Notley

Travel

Pamela Goodman gives in to whimsy in Wales

Harry Hastings delights in the Art Deco Hotel Casa Lucía in Argentina

Rosie Paterson rounds up the best new openings in Greece

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – August 12, 2024

A worker stands in an icecream store with unusual flavors.

The New Yorker (August 5, 2024): The latest issue features Roz Chast’s “Flavor of the Week” – The artist’s enticing (and not so enticing) tweaks to one of summer’s enduring pleasures.

The Supreme Court Needs Fixing, But How?

President Biden has proposed radical changes to the Court. Reviewing them is a reminder of why reform is so hard, despite dissatisfaction and a wealth of ideas.

By Amy Davidson Sorkin

Kamala Harris and the Understudy Effect

Kamala Harris and the Understudy Effect

Julie Benko, who hit it big after going on in place of Beanie Feldstein in “Funny Girl,” has a lot of advice for the Vice-President, now that she’s done with waiting in the wings.

By Zach Helfand

What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want?

The third-party Presidential candidate has a troubled past, a shambolic campaign, and some surprisingly good poll numbers.

By Clare Malone

Books: Literary Review Magazine – August 2024

Literary Review – August 3, 2024: The latest issue features ‘Rise and Fall of the Cromwells’; Thom Gunn’s demons; Prams and paintbrushes; Children of Atatürk; Friedrich in nature…

Killer with a Cause – Oliver Cromwell: Commander in Chief By Ronald Hutton

John Adamson 

Parliaments Not Taken – The Fall: The Last Days of the English Republic By Henry Reece

Edward Vallance 

Crash & Earn – Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina’s $100 Billion Debt Restructuring By Gregory MakoffLR

Sebastian Edwards 

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – August 5, 2024

A person and a small child are together on a beach.

The New Yorker (July 30, 2024): The latest issue features Gayle Kabaker’s “Beach Walk” – The artist captures a sweet moment shared by her daughter and granddaughter.

Kamala Harris Isn’t Going Back

Kamala Harris Isn’t Going Back

Fifty years after Shirley Chisholm ran for the Presidency, we find ourselves yet again questioning the durability of outmoded presumptions about race and gender. By Jelani Cobb

The Republican National Convention and the Iconography of Triumph

In Milwaukee, with a candidate who had just cheated death, the resentment rhetoric of Trump’s 2016 campaign gave way to an atmosphere of festive certainty. By Anthony Lane

Gillian Anderson’s Sex Education

She became famous playing buttoned-up Agent Scully. But in midlife her characters often have a strong erotic charge—and now she’s edited “Want,” a book of sexual fantasies. By Rebecca Mead

London Review Of Books – August 1, 2024 Preview

London Review of Books (LRB) – July 25 , 2024: The latest issue features ‘NATO’s Delusions’; On Gaslighting and Versions of Wittgenstein….

Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velázquez: A Tailor at the Court of Philip IV by Amanda Wunder – Nicola Jennings

The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium by Anthony Kaldellis – Michael Kulikowski

Nato: From Cold War to Ukraine, a History of the World’s Most Powerful Alliance by Sten Rynning

Deterring : A Biography of Nato by Peter AppsNatopolitanism: The Atlantic Alliance since the Cold War edited by Grey Anderson

Everything Is Possible: Anti-fascism and the Left in the Age of Fascism by Joseph Fronczak

On Gaslighting by Kate Abramson

Previews: Country Life Magazine – July 24, 2024

Country Life Magazine (July 23, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Talking Dogs’ – The secret language of the shepherd’s friends, Shooting on Lewis and fishing on the Test; Fired up – the foundry that made Trafalgar’s lions; Loving lapwings; Building with oak and summer in Paris….

Whistle while you work

It is mesmerising to watch one man and his dog moving a flock of sheep using a language all of their own. Katy Birchall admires the almost telepathic connection between sheepdog and handler

Who are you calling a peewit?

The pied plumage of the lapwing was once a common sight in our countryside and, as Vicky Liddell learns, moves are afoot to halt the beautiful bird’s decline

Heavy metal

The heat is on for Catriona Gray as she visits the UK’s oldest-surviving art foundry, now forging a successful future hidden away in the Hampshire countryside

The dogs that ask why

Patrick Galbraith is confounded by a case of mistaken canine identity when he embarks on a day of walked-up grouse shooting on the Isle of Lewis

The tale of the Croque Monsieur

Armed with an array of home-tied flies, David Profumo relishes pitting his wits against the wily trout of the South of England’s crystal-clear chalkstreams

From little acorns

We have been building with strong, sustainable and flexible oak since time immemorial — and the art continues to thrive, as Arabella Youens discovers

To Paris with love

The 1924 Olympics were the crowning glory of a golden age for culture in the French capital. Mary Miers looks back to an extraordinary, liberating time

Willie Hartley Russell’s favourite painting

The chairman of the Almshouse Association chooses a striking portrait of a remarkable man

Fitting like a glove

Jeremy Musson applauds the success of Woodford Hill Farm, a new country house perfect for its old Northamptonshire setting

The legacy

He is seldom given due credit, but there would be no modern Olympic Games without William Penny Brookes, finds Kate Green

As different as night and day

John Lewis-Stempel’s detour in Dorset is rewarded by an early-morning encounter with the enigmatic, elusive nightjar

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell is getting shirty with the best summer gents’ linens     

West is best

Eleanor Doughty explores the top places for London commuters to buy out west of the capital

The odd couple

Caroline Donald hails the marriage of a 200-year-old villa with a contemporary garden in Kent

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson on cherries

Bay watch

The bay leaf wins the laurels as a symbol of strength, courage and wisdom, says Ian Morton

Our daily bread

Neil Buttery examines the rise of the Anglo-Saxon Lammas loaf

Preview: The New Yorker Magazine – July 29, 2024

A man and a boy ride on a bicycle raising a French flag and an Olympic torch.

The New Yorker (July 22, 2024): The latest issue features Paul Rogers’s “Monsieur Hulot’s Olympics” – A French twist on the opening ceremony’s torch relay….

Where Do Republicans and Democrats Stand After the R.N.C.?

Biden imperilled his candidacy at the debate because of his inability to speak coherently. At the convention, Trump was doing something similar, and couldn’t stop. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Will Hezbollah and Israel Go to War?

Months of fighting at the border threaten to ignite an all-out conflict that could devastate the region.

Should We Abolish Prisons?

Our carceral system is characterized by frequent brutality and ingrained indifference. Finding a better way requires that we freely imagine alternatives. By Adam Gopnik