Originally posted by amateur51
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Originally posted by amateur51 View PostGreat stuff, JFLL - I adore the recording by the Fitzwilliam Quartet
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Franck-Strin...9922818&sr=1-1
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More's History of King Richard the Third. Uncanny how exactly it captures the actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. I have a clear visual reminder of Olivier's film: the nobles feigning to make peace with each other as enjoined by the dying King Edward; Richard's ploy to keep the Queen's family from going to meet the young Edward V; the description of Richard (as described in the play by the young Duke of York) as having been born already with teeth ('he could gnaw a crust at two hours old') ... &c. And if all this was political propaganda, I also think of the saintly More (Paul Scofield) in A Man for All Seasons.
You pays yer money ...It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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Originally posted by french frank View PostMore's History of King Richard the Third. Uncanny how exactly it captures the actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. I have a clear visual reminder of Olivier's film: the nobles feigning to make peace with each other as enjoined by the dying King Edward; Richard's ploy to keep the Queen's family from going to meet the young Edward V; the description of Richard (as described in the play by the young Duke of York) as having been born already with teeth ('he could gnaw a crust at two hours old') ... &c. And if all this was political propaganda, I also think of the saintly More (Paul Scofield) in A Man for All Seasons.
You pays yer money ...
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Originally posted by Bryn View PostBut More was writing his 'history' a couple of decades after Richard III's death, and for a Tudor audience. Surely he knew which side his bread was buttered? That Shakespeare took More's story as his principal source is pretty mush received wisdom, is it not? Is it the Logan edition you have been reading? That makes the connection between More and Shakespeare pretty clear, I would have thought.
"Last night, I hear they at Northampton lay
At Stoney Stratford will they be tonight.
Tomorrow or next night they will be here."
"I long with all my heart to see the prince,
I hear he is much grown since last I saw him."
"But I hear no. They say my son of York
Hath almost overta'en him in his growth."
"[...]Marry, they say my uncle grew so fast
That he could gnaw a crust at two hours old.
Twas full two years ere I could get a tooth ..."
&c.
(From memory - excuse inaccuracies.)It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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Originally posted by french frank View PostI see I have to hand: History of King Richard III by Sir T. More, and H. Walpole's Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III. Ideal reading for a winter's evening.Originally posted by french frank View PostMore's History of King Richard the Third. Uncanny how exactly it captures the actual scenes from Shakespeare's play. ...
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Originally posted by vinteuil View Posthe does make the point that More was very young when he wrote his History (twenty eight, I think).It isn't given us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world.
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Currently just starting - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Reaso.../dp/B009ZJQLAU Beyond Reason by David Hopson. So far interesting.
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Richard Tarleton
I thoroughly enjoyed Alan Rusbridger's "Play it again - an amateur against the impossible". Private Eye seems to have it in for AR right now.
Jared Diamond's latest, "The World until Yesterday", frankly disappointing after Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse - too much detail about New Guinea leads to an unbalanced book. A great mind and polymath but I feel he's missed his mark with this one.
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amateur51
Originally posted by Richard Tarleton View PostI thoroughly enjoyed Alan Rusbridger's "Play it again - an amateur against the impossible". Private Eye seems to have it in for AR right now.
Jared Diamond's latest, "The World until Yesterday", frankly disappointing after Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse - too much detail about New Guinea leads to an unbalanced book. A great mind and polymath but I feel he's missed his mark with this one.
Perhaps Private Eye is jealous of Rusbridger's recent coups with Wikileaks and phone-hacking,seeing both those as natural Eye territory?
Very sorry to hear about the Jared Diamond, whose earlier books that you mention I have enjoyed. Do you remember Ritchie Calder who used to write similar sorts of books (The Inheritors 1961) aeons ago?
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Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by amateur51 View PostMany thanks for these reviews, RT
Perhaps Private Eye is jealous of Rusbridger's recent coups with Wikileaks and phone-hacking,seeing both those as natural Eye territory?
Very sorry to hear about the Jared Diamond, whose earlier books that you mention I have enjoyed. Do you remember Ritchie Calder who used to write similar sorts of books (The Inheritors 1961) aeons ago?
There are some good chapters in the Diamond. There is a certain amount of re-treading old ground, re food, disease, etc., and some very good chapters, but the book veers uncomfortably between the magisterial big-picture stuff that JD does so well and blow by blow accounts of tribal wars in New Guinea which frankly you can't follow and the details of which you've forgotten by the bottom of the page. I'm really not sure that New Guinea works well enough as a microcosm of the pre-Western world.
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amateur51
Originally posted by JFLL View PostI thought I’d have another go at Proust (started but abandoned in my twenties), and have almost finished Du côté de chez Swann, and wondered whether our own M. Vinteuil could say whether he thinks Proust might have had a real violin sonata in mind behind as a basis for the one by Vinteuil which so moved and obsessed Swann. I’ve seen Fauré, Franck and Saint-Saëns mentioned.
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Originally posted by amateur51 View Post
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George Gissing The Odd Women
I must confess to not finding this as engaging as "New Grub Street". Perhaps because the subject matter now seems so dated, whereas the world of Fleet Street still flourishes, albeit metaphorically. There is little of the dark humour of, for example, that great work of literary literalness, "Mr Bailey: Grocer". The romance between Everard and Rhoda is nicely drawn, however; it reminded me of Austen's Miss Bennet and Mr Darcy as seen through a glass darkly.
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Thropplenoggin
Christoph Wolff: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician
I thought it would be very heavy-going but, thus far, it seems not. I expect the section on organs might be, mind.
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