Books & Boots

This is a very military history.

Reading the final chapters of Orlando Figes’ excellent and highly readable history of Russia, about the rise of Vladimir Putin and the lead-up to the war with Ukraine, I found myself growing more sympathetic to Putin’s accusations of western hypocrisy, and

It’s ironic to be writing an online review of American painter Robert Ryman, complete with photos of his paintings, because Ryman more than any other painter, made a fetish, made his entire career, out of insisting that people see his paintings in the fle…

‘The spire was alight halfway up the top and sending out showers and sparks – an odd and rather beautiful spectacle’ (Cecil King, Chairman of the Daily Mirror, describing the church of St Clement Danes burning after taking a direct hit during the Blitz) T…

These are my notes on the final chapters of Orlando Figes’ immensely readable ‘History of Russia’.

These are my notes on chapter 9 of Orlando Figes’ immensely readable History of Russia.

Peter I, known as ‘the Great’, was the tsar of all Russia from 1682 to 1721, and the first emperor of Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725.

In Soviet times, when Communism was its certain destiny and history was adjusted to reflect that end, there was a joke, which perhaps Orwell had in mind: ‘Russia is a country with a certain future; it is only its past which is unpredictable.’

‘The experiment is the experiment.’

This is a real blockbuster of an exhibition, not only in sheer size – filling 13 big, sometimes enormous, Royal Academy galleries – but in scope.

The basic concept is simple: 13 years before the story begins, six ‘zones’ appeared on Earth in a curving line across the rotating planet, which aliens appear to have visited.

‘Massaraksh!’

It was all unexpected and horrible, pointless and repulsive.

‘Where are you going now?’

It’s some time in the future.

The HENI Project Space Part of London’s South Bank complex, the Hayward Gallery has two exhibition spaces.

This is a great exhibition, a lovingly designed and labelled display of wonderful treasures covering the full range of Korean history, from 300 BC right up to contemporary works of art from the present day.

The Andromeda Breakthrough was a 1962 TV sequel to the popular BBC TV science fiction serial, A for Andromeda.

‘Are you seriously proposing,’ the Minister spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully, as though they were chocolates out of an assorted box, ‘that some other beings, in some distant part of the galaxy, who have never had any contact with us before, have…

Reading Olaf Stapledon’s 1944 novel Sirius transformed my opinion of the author.

This is a much more immediately readable and enjoyable book than Star Maker or Sirius.

‘I think it’s going to be frightfully difficult being me.’

This is a lovely FREE exhibition, with a great variety of attractive, interesting, and sometimes really beautiful paintings.

This is an interesting and FREE exhibition which sets out to explore the works of Belgium surrealist painter René Magritte (1898 to 1967) and his enduring influence on contemporary art.

Not a reading list, just books about or related to American history which I happen to have read.

I like Fenby’s books.

‘No man ever came to the presidency of the United States under more difficult circumstances than does Harry S.

Ballard’s penultimate novel is, like its six predecessors, set in the present day.

The Auden generation The Auden Generation Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood (1935) The Ascent of F6 by W.H.

Most of Kells’ face was dark with dried blood.

Why are modern art exhibitions so huge?

Key fact: it’s not a tapestry but an embroidery.

We went on.

It seemed to her to be the logical and disastrous end to the train of circumstance in which she had become involved.

That’s the one trouble with this country: everything, weather, all, hangs on too long.

Father was teaching us that all men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away… (Example of the corrosive cynicism of Quentin Compson III which afflicts his family and dooms

He got out of bed in sections, like a poorly made automaton, and carried his hands into the bathroom.

‘Whether he drew an explicit horizon or suggested one through space and composition, landscape remained the underlying structure of his storytelling.’

Japan House is an oasis of style and elegance just fifty yards from High Street Kensington tube.

‘Let’s start from the beginning.

The white paper acts as a laxative.

Hemingway published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works.

Ernest Hemingway wrote some 70 short stories.

‘To Have and Have Not’ contains offensive racial terms and my review refers to them, so don’t read it if these offend you.

The Photographers’ Gallery has three exhibition spaces: the upper galleries which host paid exhibitions, currently the excellent Japanese Women Photographers: From 1950s to Now the Print Sales Room, downstairs, which hosts small but beautiful displays of…

This feels like an oddity – a big room at the Saatchi Gallery devoted to contemporary art with a medieval theme.

‘Let’s not talk about how I am,’ Nick said.

‘We’re splendid people,’ Catherine said.

‘Men Without Women’ was Ernest Hemingway’s second collection of short stories.