Author name: Scott

Vermeer by Lawrence Gowing

LIVES WELL LIVED? A pick from biography and memoir

This is a classic study of an artist, first published 1970. Lawrence Gowing (http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/07/obituaries/sir-lawrence-gowing-a-painter-writer-curator-and-teacher-72.html) explores the ways in which Johannes Vermeer (Johannes Vermeer – Dutch Baroque, Genre Paintings, Delft | Britannica) was similar to and different from his contemporaries – especially Vermeer’s early struggles with genre scenes and his solutions (solitary women lost in their […]

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The Unwomanly Face of War by Svetlana Alexievich

PAST PRESENT - What's new in History

For more than three decades, Svetlana Alexievich (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/21/svetlana-alexievich-interview) has been the memory and conscience of the twentieth century. When the Swedish Academy awarded her the Nobel Prize, it cited her invention of ‘a new kind of literary genre’. The quality of her work is seen in The Unwomanly Face of War, in which she chronicles the experiences

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The Proper Study of Mankind

EGGHEAD CHOICE - Crack open for a hard boiled think

I’d better declare – Isaiah Berlin (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/berlin/) is right up there for me as a penetrating intellect and champion of liberalism. The Proper Study of Mankind brings together his most celebrated writing. In this volume the reader will find Berlin’s famous essay on Tolstoy, ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox’; his insightful portraits of contemporaries from Pasternak and

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Imperium by Ryszard Kapuscinski

PAST PRESENT - What's new in History

Each of the brutal and repressive regimes that have ever existed have been brutal and repressive in their own uniquely interesting ways. The Soviet Union takes its place among these. Journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/jan/25/pressandpublishing.booksobituaries) wandered across the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991. His sharply observed travelogue illuminates the tragedy of 20th-century Soviet history and

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Confabulations

LITERARY BENT - Writing at its best

John Berger (5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/30/john-berger-at-90-interview-storyteller) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His essay on art criticism, Ways of Seeing (1972), was written as an accompaniment to a BBC series intended as a response to the broadcast of ‘Civilisation’ by Kenneth Clark. It has been highly influential, and often prescribed

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Genghis Khan

PAST PRESENT - What's new in History

Our primate relations on the tree of life go on raiding parties. (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/21/chimpanzees-territory-killing-neighbours) They have a deep instinct to conquer and dominate, establishing rule over territory. So it is with us. None of the empires in human history (Roman, Chinese, Persian, Mongol, British) got established without violence, massacre and repression. And if one had to

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