The good books
Personal culture is, well, personal, so a list of writers who have been most important to me in my 50 years of reading may well not resonate with anyone else. … Continue reading
The forgotten Hitler
I recently wrote an essay on Leni Riefenstahl, notorious as the director of Triumph of the Will, a film made to celebrate the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. What … Continue reading
A question of life or death
Is there death before life? Time is a two way highway, but we seldom look backwards in our journey through life. Instead of always asking about what happens after we … Continue reading
Tarkovsky’s Solaris
A spaceship has discovered signs of intelligent life on another planet. Study continues over a period of years from an orbiting space station. Back on earth concern is felt, as … Continue reading
Eça de Queiroz: The Maias
“Of all words of tongue and pen,/the saddest are ‘It might have been’” says Bret Harte. I’ve just finished reading Eça de Queiroz’ The Maias, a work poignantly saturated with … Continue reading
The Greek Way: Edith Hamilton
” Little is left of all this wealth of great art: the sculptures, defaced and broken into bits, have crumbled away; the buildings are fallen; the paintings gone forever; of … Continue reading
Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye
The Inner Eye by Andrew Robinson, (I.B.Tauris 2004) is an attempt to deal with an unusual problem: a writer, composer, artist and film maker, of world stature, who created in … Continue reading
