Category Archives: Book review

This large-format book was a present from a Polish student and is essentially a coffee-table guide to the country. The chapters are entitled: Geography; Cities; Churches; Palaces, Castles and Manor Houses; and Nature. It was probably wise not to include … Continue reading →

This book was self-published in 1964, and I was given a copy some twenty years later by (I think) the author’s son, when I was on a school trip to Greece. It is a collection of essays on mediæval and … Continue reading →

I bought this thinking this would be an anthology of verse read aloud, with at most brief introductions to each selection, but it’s an audiobook, dating from 2009, with extracts of poetry read to illustrate. What is it an audiobook … Continue reading →

If you come across this book soon after I write this, it’s still useful for another couple of years as it covers all solar and lunar eclipses from 1998 to 2017. Each solar eclipse has a map of its path … Continue reading →

This is a book out of its time. It was planned between the wars as a project for someone who never did much about it before his death in 1952, and was then taken over as a retirement project by … Continue reading →

I made a New Year’s resolution for 2008 to read Miles Kington’s column in the Independent four times a week. Sadly, he was dead by the end of January, something which has put me off such resolutions ever since. Here … Continue reading →

These ‘encounters with the master’s Composing Houses’ are written by an architect and Mahler enthusiast. Our copy was given to some family members while they were standing in a Prom queue. It’s a popular cliché now that men like sheds, … Continue reading →

N.B. This review is of the 1963 second edition of this work. Some of the defects may have been remedied in more recent editions. I would guess that this was intended as a source-book to go with the ecclesiastical history … Continue reading →

I must confess to not having read this, just flipped through it for 10 minutes or so on a charity book stall, deciding whether to buy. I didn’t, for the following reason: I’m a Bathonian (by over a decade’s residence) … Continue reading →

This is the script for the great movie where film noir came home to central Europe. But don’t think that you will know what it contains, because you’ve seen the film; it’s far from being simply the soundtrack to it. … Continue reading →