The King Must Die (1958): Mary Renault

16 Comments

★★★★★

Although I’m only posting about it now, I finished The King Must Die before embarking on Gates of Fire. My planned project this year is a reread of Mary Renault’s classical history novels, which had such a huge impact on me as an impressionable teenager. Two books stood out particularly strongly in my memory: The King Must Die and Fire From Heaven, and I was delighted to hear that Heloise was also keen to read the former. Our very informal joint reading was punctuated by excited whittering about myths (from me) and fascinating comments about narrative patterns and the question of consent in sacrifice (from her). I’m pleased to report that I’ve infected her with my Renault enthusiasm and in fact she’s already finished the sequel, The Bull From The Sea.

Continue reading →

Gates of Fire (1998): Steven Pressfield

7 Comments

★★★★

Before I begin, a note of warning: this post assumes that you’re familiar with the outcome of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. I’m leaping to the conclusion that, if you haven’t already read this book, you’ll probably have seen the film 300 or come across this stirring story in a history book or documentary. If you don’t know what happened, then my recommendation would be to simply buy this book and plunge in: don’t read any further, and don’t go looking up anything on Wikipedia. It’ll be even more dazzling and gut-wrenching if you don’t know what to expect.

Continue reading →

Kristin Lavransdatter (1920-22): Sigrid Undset

6 Comments

★★★★

This is not the longest book I’ve ever read, though it comes close – trailing just behind World Without End and War and Peace, and probably The Lord of the Rings too, if we count that as a single book – but it certainly feels like the longest. I started it back in October, and since then it’s been flowing quietly along beneath the other books I’ve been reading like some great leviathan. Now and then I’ve put it aside for a bit, but its shadow has always been there, flickering at the corner of my eye. Finishing it feels like a major accomplishment. If I had a spare bottle of champagne, I’d be tempted to open it.

Continue reading →

The Golden City (2013): J. Kathleen Cheney

1 Comment

★★★

Since entering the Amaral family’s service as companion to their self-willed daughter Isabel, Oriana Paredes has been drawn into more than a few of her employer’s whims. Isabel’s most recent plan, however, casts all the rest into shadow: she has arranged to elope to Paris with Marianus Efisio, her cousin’s fiance. Despite disapproving of the match, Oriana has decided to accompany Isabel, to protect her as far as possible on this threshold of her new life. And yet it transpires that it isn’t social scandal or even Efisio himself that Isabel has to fear.

Continue reading →

Cirque du Soleil: Quidam (1996)

Leave a comment
Zoe: Cirque du Soleil: Quidam

Zoe: Cirque du Soleil: Quidam

★★★★

(Royal Albert Hall, London, 1 February 2014)

Something a little different today; and this is going to be a largely image-based post, for which I make no apology. Words only go so far with the Cirque du Soleil: it is first and foremost a dazzling spectacle, a delicious selection-box of acts celebrating the grace, strength and power of the human body. We’d never been to any of their performances before, but for this year’s birthday treat  I was whisked off to see Quidam at the Royal Albert Hall. What a magnificent setting that is for a circus! – where else in London do you have quite the same feeling of being inside a luxurious big-top? And, over the course of the next two hours, a whole new world opened up before us: a gorgeously stylised magical other-where.

Continue reading →

The Iron King (1955): Maurice Druon

8 Comments

★★½

The Accursed Kings: Book I

I imagine many of you will already have tackled this book, which was published in a new edition with much fanfare about a year ago. I’m fully aware that I’m late to the party: I remember that Helen read it, and liked it, in March last year. As Helen mentioned, the quote blazoned on the cover from George R.R. Martin (‘This is the original Game of Thrones‘) has actually worked against the book in some ways: some eager fantasy readers have ended up with rather more medieval intrigue and rather fewer direwolves than they’d counted on, and so some reviews have been critical because people have, fundamentally, just been expecting the wrong kind of book.

Continue reading →

Secrecy (2013): Rupert Thomson

1 Comment

★★★

Secrecy has been drifting on the edge of my radar for some time, as you might expect of a book set in Medicean Florence. I finally got around to reading it last week, and found it a rather unusual piece of work: it deals with both a period and a subject that don’t crop up very often in historical fiction. The Medici in this novel are not, as I’d initially expected, the glittering Laurentian Medici of the Renaissance. On the contrary, these are the Medici left over at the dwindling end of the family’s great trajectory through Italian history: a fading dynasty of Grand Dukes, weakened by inbreeding and debauchery, their ancestors’ political acumen frittered away, their virility and vitality exhausted.

Continue reading →

Turner and the Sea (2013-14)

3 Comments

Turner: The Fighting Temeraire

(National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, until 21 April 2014)

J.M.W. Turner grew up with water always close to hand: his childhood was divided between London, on the banks of the Thames, and Margate, on the Kentish coast. In the last quarter of the 18th century, this was a world of sail power, where fishing, travel or warfare depended on a good wind. By the time he died in the mid-19th century, however, that world had vanished, replaced by steamships, ironclads and roaring coal furnaces. The sea remained central to British life, though, and it found a similarly enduring place at the centre of Turner’s art.

Continue reading →

Masterpieces of Chinese Painting: 700-1900 (2013-14)

1 Comment

Emperor Huizong: Ladies preparing silk

(Victoria & Albert Museum, London, closed on 19 January 2014)

This exhibition was the hit of the autumn in London. Many people told me how wonderful it was, but for various reasons I only managed to get there on the final weekend, when a friend and I realised that we were in danger of missing it altogether. How I wish I’d managed to go a little sooner! It would have been great to read the catalogue and then go back again to savour it all from a more informed perspective. As it was, I was almost completely ignorant of what to expect, and found myself bowled over.

Continue reading →

The Sea Road (2000): Margaret Elphinstone

4 Comments

★★★★½

I haven’t read any of Margaret Elphinstone’s books before, but came across this novel shortly after finishing Nancy Marie Brown’s The Far Traveler. That book examined archaeological and literary sources about the life of Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, one of the most widely-travelled and adventurous women in the years around 1000. It’s no surprise that I leapt at the chance to see what a novelist could do with the same material; and Elphinstone’s book has proven to be a remarkable thing.

Continue reading →