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Index: Biography, Memoir and Autobiographical Prose

The Case of Edmund Rack.

Sunday, 28 October 2012

Tom Lowenstein: ‘Buried in [John Collinson’s] Preface, Rack’s presence counts for nothing. He’s the ghost in the corpus. Once he has done service, this Norfolk weaver’s son (who’d made his living as a dyer), is penned up in a sentence. The book’s proclaimed author is a Church Patrician. While Rack exits, once he’d briefly entered, like a footman, in a single movement.’

Also filed in Excerpts & Passages, Poetry & Fiction, Principal Articles | Tagged | Comments (0)

Understanding life backwards.

Saturday, 10 March 2012

Alan Macfarlane: The world of the British Empire and my up-bringing will no doubt strike most people, whether in Africa, South America or China, as extraordinary even now. It is likely that in another century it will seem a magical and different world even to the British. My own childhood nearly sixty years ago is starting to take on a magical unreality – a foreign country where they do different things for different reasons. If that is so for me, how much more will it be for my great grandchildren or my friends from China or Japan?

Also filed in History & Travel, Principal Articles | Tagged | Comments (0)

Among ‘Vanished Kingdoms’, whose is next?

Sunday, 26 February 2012

For even the mightiest sovereigns, eventual collapse is a safer bet than indefinite life. But there is a line separating awareness of unpleasant historical facts from fatalistic acceptance, and Mr. Davies, both in conversation and in his work, treads it watchfully.

Also filed in Chronicle & Notices, Economics and Finance | | Comments (0)

How bad was colonialism? Pretty good! Racial politics aside.

Friday, 10 February 2012

Mr. Kwarteng is a black writer of Ghanaian origin who might have been expected to adopt the classic left-wing analysis of the British Empire as an exploitative, racist kleptocracy. Instead, he has written a far subtler and more nuanced critique.

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Cissy Patterson: an American journalist’s three-drink claws.

Saturday, 4 February 2012

Following the trend of Americans making socially advantageous marriages to European aristocrats, Patterson wed a Russian count who abused her and kidnapped their only child. It’s an incredible story given new life through [Amanda] Smith’s research, which uncovered sources that reveal how – through the intervention of Patterson’s family, President Taft and the Russian Czar – Patterson’s three-year-old daughter was finally returned home.

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The Fortnightly Review