At Drake’s Command (2012): David Wesley Hill

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★★★

David Wesley Hill’s novel is the first in a planned series, which follows Francis Drake’s circumnavigation of the world through the eyes of the young cook and crew-member Peregrine James. We first meet Perry in Plymouth in November 1577, where he is being publicly whipped for a theft he didn’t commit. Determined to make a better life for himself, he talks his way onto the crew of the Pelican, which under the command of Francis Drake is said to be heading off on a trading voyage to Alexandria.

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Late Raphael (2012-13)

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Raphael: Self Portrait with a friend

(Musée du Louvre, Paris, until 14 January 2013)

The things I do for art! Yesterday I got up horrendously early and went to Paris for the day, to visit the Louvre’s Late Raphael exhibition before it closed (yes, I took the Eurostar from London, went to the Louvre, saw the exhibition and took the train right back home again: there’s something faintly surreal about it). Previously at the Prado, this is the natural successor of the National Gallery’s 2004-5 show Raphael: From Urbino to Rome.

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Singin’ in the Rain (1983)

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Singin' in the Rain

★★★★½

(Palace Theatre, London, currently booking until September 2013)

It’s official. Happiness is Adam Cooper in a trilby.

The place is Hollywood, the year 1927, and Don Lockwood (Adam Cooper) and Lina Lamont (Katherine Kingsley) are the golden couple of the silver screen. Their on-screen romance has captured the hearts of their public and provided their studio, Monumental Pictures, with a series of smash-hit silent movies. But times are changing. Warner Bros have just released The Jazz Singer and suddenly the pictures have exploded into sound.

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Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (2012-13)

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Burne-Jones: The Rock of Doom

(Tate Britain, London, until 13 January 2013)

The Pre-Raphaelites were responsible for getting me into art history in the first place. As a teenager I fell in love with their dreamy evocations of Shakespearean and historical subjects, captivated first by the stories rather than the pictures themselves. Although I know many of their paintings extremely well, I haven’t really thought about them in context before and so this highly-acclaimed exhibition offered a chance to look more closely at the principles, motives and aims of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It’s a tough job: many of these images are so famous, so seared onto our national consciousness, that it’s virtually impossible to judge them from the necessary distance.

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Richard III (1592/94): William Shakespeare

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Richard III: William Shakespeare

★★★½

(Apollo Theatre, London, playing in rep with Twelfth Night until 10 February 2013)

After garnering rave reviews at the Globe over the summer, this company has moved to winter quarters at the Apollo. A beautiful wooden set recalls the Globe’s stage while also suggesting the feel of an indoor Jacobean theatre: two arched doorways at the back of the stage are surmounted by a musicians’ balcony and on either side are two tiers of wooden seating. It’s a taste of what the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is going to look like.

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Cloud Atlas (2004): David Mitchell

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★★★★ ½

I’m delighted to be able to kick off the New Year with a post on a real stunner of a book, which I expect will already be familiar to most of you. There are a few literary adaptations coming out in the cinema over the next couple of months and so in principle this gives me an opportunity to revisit the books that I have read and to track down those I haven’t. Cloud Atlas is one of those I hadn’t read before: it came out when I was at university, but I was never particularly attracted to it because all the reviews I read simply lost themselves in hyberbole about its conceptual brilliance and neglected to give me any real sense of the story. Eight years later, having found a copy for £1.50 in a charity shop, I’ve come to realise that actually the critics were right. The concept is brilliant.

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Merry Christmas!

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Giorgone: Adoration of the Shepherds

Just a quick message to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, wherever and however you choose to celebrate the holidays, and all health, happiness and prosperity for 2013. Thank you so much for visiting The Idle Woman this year, and special thanks to those who take the time to leave comments, to discuss and to recommend things to me, whether on the blog or via email.

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Lucky Jim (1954): Kingsley Amis

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★★★

It’s 1950 and Jim Dixon is fed up. Having served in the Second World War, he has returned to academia in lieu of anything better to do and is now at the end of his first year teaching Medieval History at an unnamed provincial university. It’s a subject for which he feels no particular affection or aptitude; indeed, he has developed a particular loathing for it. His discontent radiates outwards, encompassing the insular and petty world of the university, those of his students intelligent enough to risk exposing him for the fraud he is, and virtually all his colleagues.

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We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962): Shirley Jackson

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★★★★

I first heard about this thanks to Simon at Stuck in a Book, who has mentioned Shirley Jackson a few times over the last couple of years, always with great affection. The post that particularly caught my eye covered Simon’s thoughts on her first volume of memoirs, Life Among the Savages, which he described enticingly as the ‘Provincial Lady transferred to America’. I filed her under ‘authors to read one day’ and then, quite unexpectedly, stumbled across a copy of her most famous novella, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, in my local charity shop. Without any idea of what to expect, I bought it. Indeed, because Simon had spoken highly of it and I know his fondness for Persephone Books, and because the title sounded vaguely like I Capture the Castle, I assumed (with no justification whatsoever) that it was going to be a rather heart-warming, languid tale of a well-to-do childhood in a crumbling big house. Not so.

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