Tremontaine: Season 1 (2016): Ellen Kushner et al.

September 12, 2016May 23, 20208 Comments

★★★

with chapters by Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese, Patty Bryant and Paul Witcover

Apologies to all the authors I wasn’t able to show in the photo above, but it seemed a good idea to stick with Ellen Kushner. This ambitious project takes place in her world after all, unfurling the intrigues and romances that act as a prequel to Swordspoint. Here we see the city in all its familiar shades, from the dangerous alleyways of Riverside thick with thieves, rogues and swordsmen, to the elegant decadence of the Hill, where fashions, plots and chocolate are the order of the day.

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Geisha (2000): Lesley Downer

September 11, 2016May 23, 2020Leave a comment

★★★★

The secret history of a vanishing world

In the West we’ve developed a romanticised view of the geisha, largely thanks to Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha and the related film. The geisha have become one of the defining images of old Japan for many of us, like samurai or cherry blossom, but Downer takes us beyond the picture-perfect gloss into the complex histories and modern incarnations of this fascinating profession.

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The Museum of Things Left Behind (2015): Seni Glaister

September 10, 2016May 23, 2020Leave a comment

★★★★

Somewhere on the border between Italy and Austria, in a deep gorge shielded from its neighbours’ eyes, lies the pretty little city-state of Vallerosa. Life in this sleepy country continues much as it has for decades: every evening the men gather at the two bars in the main square – the clientele of each dictated by long tradition; the women work hard out of sight; and Vallerosa’s chief glory remains the plantations where they grow their famous tea. And yet the President, Sergio Scorpioni, is troubled.

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Sorcerer to the Crown (2015): Zen Cho

September 9, 2016May 23, 20203 Comments

★★★½

Sorcerer Royal Trilogy: Book I

This was another recommendation from Heloise, and proved to be another delightful piece of escapism. Set in London in an alternate version of the early 19th century, it reads like the love-child of Georgette Heyer and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. The story unfolds in familiar territory, among the fine houses of St James’s and Mayfair, with White’s and Almack’s constant presences in the background. However, there are also lesser-known institutions, such as the Theurgist’s club, where frivolous youngsters fritter away their talents, and the Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers. For this is a London where magic holds sway.

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Anna and the King of Siam (1943): Margaret Landon

September 6, 2016May 23, 20205 Comments

★★★★

This wonderful little book is a reissued classic first published in 1944, which tells a story made famous by the Rogers & Hammerstein musical The King and I. Having neither heard nor seen that musical, I had no real idea of what to expect from this novel. My vague notions that I’d picked up here and there turned out to be completely mistaken and perhaps the result of confusing The King and I with The Sound of Music (musical governesses, you see). This book is not a love story at all, but something far more interesting: the tale of a confrontation between two worlds, two belief systems and two indomitable personalities. Based on Anna Leonowens’s own letters and other documents, it lures the reader into the exotic world of mid-19th-century Siam.

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A curator’s tale

September 5, 2016September 4, 201610 Comments

Or, a newbie’s guide to preparing an exhibition

Last week I wrote about the forthcoming French Portrait Drawings show at the British Museum. Today I thought it might be fun, a few days before it opens on 8 September, to tell you a bit about the planning process from idea to installation, from a very personal point of view. The entire experience was new to me and, since many of my friends don’t seem quite sure what a curator does, I thought this might be of interest.

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The Girl Who Fought Napoleon (2016): Linda Lafferty

September 4, 2016May 23, 2020Leave a comment

★★★½

A novel of the Russian Empire

This book is one for those who were taken by the BBC’s recent production of War and Peace. It sweeps from the glittering salons of the upper classes in St Petersburg, where French language and culture reign supreme, to the brutal bleakness of the battlefields on which Russian soldiers fight to hold back the steady creep of French imperial ambition. At the heart of this novel – based, I should emphasise, on a fascinating true story – are two characters whose experiences offer complementary perspectives on the situation.

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Cathar (2016): Christopher Bland

September 3, 2016May 23, 20202 Comments

★★★

I asked to review Cathar with a hint of trepidation. In recent historical fiction the Cathars, like the Knights Templar, have been appropriated by the religious-conspiracy crowd and I wasn’t quite sure what I was letting myself in for. Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised: there were no secret societies (beyond Catharism itself) and no hint of the Grail. This is pure historical fiction. More than, there’s a lot of genuine history here: it reintroduced me to a crowd of real-life figures whom I last encountered during my history degree in Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie’s magisterial study of Montaillou.

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Mozart Reimagined (2015): Tyson Vick

September 1, 2016May 23, 2020Leave a comment

★★★★

Some weeks ago I was searching for photos of the Royal Opera House’s classic production of Mitridate designed by Graham Vick, but when I Googled ‘Mitridate‘ and ‘Vick’, I didn’t get quite the results I was expecting. Instead I found the most incredible series of pictures taken by Tyson Vick, an American photographer, who has spent ten years working on an ambitious project to take at least one representative photograph for every Mozart opera. And I mean every. This remarkable book is the result, and it truly is Mozart as you’ve never seen him before.

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The Comedy of Errors (1594): William Shakespeare

August 31, 2016May 23, 2020Leave a comment

★★★★

(Antic Disposition, Grays Inn Hall, until 1 September 2016)

A year on from Henry V, Antic Disposition turn their sights on another of Shakespeare’s plays, this time the considerably less familiar Comedy of Errors. As you all know, I do like my Shakespeare, but I’d neither read nor seen this play before and had little idea of what to expect. However, I always know that I’m in for a good show where this company are concerned and they outdid themselves here, turning this zany comedy of mistaken identities into a riotous farce, peppered with sultry musical numbers and with a setting best described as a blend between Some Like It Hot and The Grand Budapest Hotel.

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