Books

The Honorary Ottoman

Frances Weaver — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:36:43 +0100

Author:Noel Malcolm

Bernard Lewis: Consulted by presidents

May 1916 was a propitious time for the history of the Ottoman Empire — that is, for the historiography of it, not for the historic existence of the empire itself, which was about to come to a decisive end. For, by an extraordinary coincidence, the two greatest modern historians of the Ottoman world were born that month, less than a week apart: Halil Inalcik in Istanbul on May 26 and Bernard Lewis in London five days later. Even more extraordinarily, both are still going strong, in the middle of their tenth decade. It's almost as if the leading experts on Victorian England today had been born in the reign of Queen Victoria.

A Dangerous Artist to Know

Frances Weaver — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:31:30 +0100

Author:Brian Allen

Despite the enigma of Caravaggio's character and personality, he remains an irresistible topic for biographers. Andrew Graham-Dixon's excellent new book is the latest to attempt to come to grips with this brilliant yet violent and bohemian artist. In his lifetime, and in all the early accounts of his career, Caravaggio is described as "strange" and even one of his most loyal patrons, Cardinal del Monte, is quoted as saying that Caravaggio was "un cervello stravagantissimo" ("an extremely odd person"). The complexity of Caravaggio's character as well as his art is vividly evoked by Graham-Dixon throughout this book.

The Answer Lies in the Soil

Frances Weaver — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:22:39 +0100

Author:Caroline Moorehead

When we moved to the country in 1996, my small children were "townies". In the first weeks of their new life, they came running to me in dismay. Our neighbour was felling hornbeam in the nearby wood. "Doesn't he know," they said sorrowfully, "that cutting down trees is wrong?" They had learnt at nursery school an environmental song (chorus, with gleeful pointing of childish fingers: "Shame! Shame! Shame on YOU...") and absorbed the unthinking belief that Nature is Good and everything man does to it Bad. Many, perhaps most, nature programmes promulgate the same view, where every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.

Jottings of a Journeyman

Frances Weaver — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 17:16:44 +0100

Author:Louis Amis

It seems fundamental to the nature of The Odyssey that it should be forever reworked and retold. The world it describes scarcely admits a definitive account of events: whimsical gods appear in dreams or in daylight, as themselves or in disguise. They invade men's minds, or spirit them away wrapped in clouds, leaving lifelike phantoms behind. And through this world travels Odysseus polytropos, the man "of many ways". He comes sometimes bravely, sometimes cringingly. He fights honourably, and treacherously; he speaks humbly, or with hubristic pride. He is both blessed and cursed, both right and wrong. The only constant is his love of lies, tricks, pretence and of not revealing himself — and he, this most unreliable witness, narrates a large part of The Odyssey, his own story, himself. It's a story that doesn't just allow alternate versions, but implies them in almost infinite number.