by beatriceotto | Jun 26, 2016 | metaphors
The re-making of maps as Frankenstein collage. How much havoc has torn harmony apart with such unrelated stitchings together? ‘It is an odd accident that Mary Shelley should have been writing Frankenstein just as Prussia was settling into its new territories – a...
by beatriceotto | Jun 18, 2016 | a quote to note
I like the idea that something about futility is written so splendidly that it’s worth reading before you give up on all human pretensions. If I get around to it, I’ll review it here. ‘My favourite piece of prose is Sir Thomas Browne’s magnificently resigned...
by beatriceotto | Jun 18, 2016 | a quote to note
One of the best film reviews I’ve ever read, so bewitching. I must seek out The Scarlet Empress, Dietrich as Catherine the Great give or take some theatrical liberties, not least in the out of control costume department. ‘The movie is so vivid and brutal that it...
by beatriceotto | Jun 18, 2016 | a quote to note
Winder breezily lobs perspective into cosy schoolyard us-and-them memories. Britain had a role in triggering the first world war (among others), summed up in one emissary’s snooty crassness; a caution against driving people to sprint into the arms of war faster than...
by beatriceotto | Jun 18, 2016 | a quote to note
Winder has a pithiness about him that condenses decades of internecine squabbling and violence into a snappy summary of the consequences. ‘All the labyrinthine details of the fighting hold their distressing interest because of this futility: nobody gets what they want...
by beatriceotto | Jun 14, 2016 | triologisms
Winder’s Germania shows how far we, and Hollywood, view ancient Germany through the eyes of ancient Rome, a boggy and terrifying ‘light-deprived nightmare’, distilled in the film Gladiator with the Roman confrontation of the ‘fog-bound...
by beatriceotto | Jun 10, 2016 | a quote to note
I wish more writers would show their personal connection to their subjects. This warmth and quirk does nothing to detract from the rigour and insight of Winder’s writing; on the contrary, it makes it more memorable. Gustavus Adolphus can never be a mere ‘King of...
by beatriceotto | Jun 10, 2016 | a quote to note
Winder has a passionate attachment to Germany – nobody could have embraced its vast history and culture with such easy mastery without loving the place. Yet he sometimes seems unsure how that came about, and he can’t deny the climatic, cultural and culinary...
by beatriceotto | Jun 10, 2016 | a quote to note
There must be a good study of wine in European trade and war. England’s sometime claim to half of France was curiously biased towards the finest wine-growing regions, until the French squeezed them into Calais, at which point they gave up. And we’ve all seen...
