[…] the importance of the railways grew as the invading troops headed towards Germany and the ports of Cherbourg and, subsequently, Antwerp became fully operational. Without the ability of the railways to transport the vast quantities of supplies needed to maintain and continue the sweep eastwards, the ultimate victory may well have been in 1946 rather than May 1945 – or perhaps never.
(Introduction).
There’s no denying that the above quotation ought to somehow entrench itself within the mindset of every seriously open-minded historian. Indeed, anyone looking back at both the chronology and the catastrophe of the Second World War, ought to indeed remind oneself of the role in which the railways came to the absolute fore with regards the war’s inevitable outcome.
As without them, the outcome of the war may well have been very different.
If not much, much later.
As the railways, and the men who ran and operated them, were as absolutely vital in winning the war, as the solders on the front line.
No ifs. No buts, No question.
And herein lies the prime substance of The Liberation Line – The Last Untold Story of the Normandy Landingsin which the respected author, Christian Wolmar (whose previous books include The Subterranean Railway; Fire & Steam; Blood, Iron & Gold and Engines of War among others) addresses this altogether vital – albeit oft overlooked issue.
Within the parameters of history, said issue is a horribly sad state of unprecedented affairs, which Wolmar goes out of his way to address very early on: ‘’Despite the omission of the role of the railways from so many accounts of the retaking of Europe by the Allies, it is difficult to dispute the notion that they were the key to the Allies’ ultimate victory. A quote in a US military account of the conflict sums up brilliantly the role of transportation in war: ‘Objectives were set high. In war, transportation frequently has to try to do more than it can. Otherwise it will not do enough.’ Transport is often the last consideration in military minds but is, in effect, the first requirement. ‘Nothing happens until something moves’ is the apposite credo of the US Transportation Corps.’’’
Indeed, nothing does happen until something moves, which is why these 329 pages (excluding Maps, Foreword, Acknowledgements, Endnotes, List of Illustrations and Index) account for such a revelatory read: ‘’They certainly were not soldiers, yet they suddenly found themselves in uniform, in a foreign land. But, as locomotive drivers, track-workers, conductors, porters, signalmen and engine cleaners, they knew how to run trains. And their job was to bring them back to life.’’
Written in a clear and altogether highly informed manner, The Liberation Line does more than merely set the record straight. It finally brings the aforementioned role to a much needed foreground. There again, as written in The Times: ‘’Christian Wolmar is Britain’s foremost railway historian.
Vivid, as well as colourful and concise, this book sheds more than warranted light on the unsung heroes of the Normandy Landings.
Ulysses extraordinary power to articulate early twentieth-century experience was attested to by writers who have become known, like Joyce, as modernists. T. S. Eliot wrote of the novel as ‘’the most important expression which this present age has found,’’ as a ‘’book to which we are all indebted, and from which none of us can escape.’’
That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of language it is. The thoughts. Solemn.
Accompanied by a number of maps and illustrations, while compiled by a menagerie of very well respected contributors (most of whom are Professors or Senior Lecturers at a number of universities from around the world), this more than lavish and weighty tomb of a book conveys everything one could possibly wish for from a favourite work – be it literature or a painting or whatever.
To be sure, As Catherine Flynn states at the very outset of the Introduction: ‘’The experience of struggling through Ulysses for the first time is something unusual in our cultural landscape where so much is consumable, bite-sized, and bingeable. Wrestling with and puzzling through Joyce’s strange book offers readers the opportunity to stretch their minds and expand their imaginations, and so to encounter who they are in dynamic ways. In this volume, an introductory essay prefaces each of the episodes of Ulysses but these can be saved to read after the novel. Ulysses’s literary allusions, as well as its foreign language phrases and historical references, are explained in the footnotes, which draw from and build upon earlier works of annotation. To produce a complete elucidation of the novel and all of its allusions and references, however, is not just impossible but undesirable, as it it would put mere explanation in the places of experience and bypass the rich and suggestive ambiguities of the text. To produce a compete explanation is to take away the reason to read Ulysses in the first place.’’
Flynn is spot-on in relation to ‘’the rich and suggestive ambiguities of the text.’’
This is what surely accounts for a great deal of Ulysses longevity and attraction in the first place. To over analyse, would indeed be to severely, as well as unfortunately, miss the point; which, for all miss-opportunistic intents and rancid, class induced purposes, is what appears to have taken place with regards Virginia Woolf, who (unsurprisingly) wrote of it ‘’with distaste in her diary: ‘’an illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self-taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating […].’’
‘’Woolf’s labelling of Joyce as ‘’self-taught’’ says less about Joyce, who in fact had a degree in modern languages, and more about Ulysses, a novel that ransacks existing literature’’ (my italics).
It might further be argued that Woolf’s ‘’ultimately nauseating’’ comments say far more about her, than they do James Joyce.
Moreover, so far as pure literary criticism is concerned, the following, written by Scarlett Baron, demonstrates the deft (and high-octane to say the least) consideration that can be found throughout in abundance:
‘’As the tenth in the book’s series of eighteen episodes, ‘’Wandering Rocks’’ is often regarded as a pivot between the relatively comprehensible prose of the first half of Ulysses and the ever more radical experimentation of the second. Joyce too seems to have regarded it as occupying a central position: the words ‘’End of First Part of ‘Ulysses’’’ appear at the foot of his fair-copy manuscript of the ninth, or ‘’Seylla and Charybdis,’’ episode. Yet ‘’Wandering Rocks’presents more of a challenging than this account of its halfway house position might suggest. Though the formal and stylistic novelties of ‘’Aeolus’’ and ‘’Seylla and Charybdis’’ may be so defamiliarizing to the reader so as to make ‘’Wandering Rocks’’ seem a place of respite, the apparent ‘’plainness’’ of its ‘’predominantly homogenous dead-pan style’’ conceals dramatic infringements of the book’s previously established narrative norms’’ (10. ‘Wandering Rocks’).
Similarly, the following by Tim Conley, which opens with the following: ‘’Eumaeus’’ is a mystery, in several senses of the word. Full of doubtful reports and people, it is a late-night foray into the world of criminals, adventurers, and down-and-outs. Just as Homer’s hero conceals his identity from his faithful swineherd, the namesake of this chapter, and fabricates a history for himself, Joyce’s narrative offers a blend of tall tales and coy evasions. The swineherd, scorned by and scornful of the suitors, gives the stranger food and shelter, but is not entirely duped by the fantastical stories given him in return: don’t try to charm me now, don’t spellbind me with your lies! Never for that will I respect you, treat you kindly. Their encounter is a blend of hospitality and parrying, generosity and wariness […]. First-time readers of the novel are likely to judge the episode of a mystery, too, in as much as it may seem such an anticlimax. After all, they have waited hundreds of pages to see Bloom and Stephen actually meet, and have probably entertained some expectations for that event, only to find the encounter’s details obfuscated when potentially interesting, and all too clear when not […]’’ (16. ‘Eumaeus’).
As it says on the very back of the cover: ‘’James Joyce’s Ulysses is considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. This new edition – published to celebrate the book’s first publication – helps readers to understand the pleasures of this monumental work and to grapple with its challenges.
Copiously equipped with maps, photographs, and explanatory footnotes, it provides a vivid and illuminating context for the experiences of Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Molly Bloom, as well as Joyce’s many other Dublin characters, on June 16, 1904. Featuring a facsimile of the historic 1922 Shakespeare and Company text, this version includes Joyce’s own errata as well as references to amendments made in later editions. Each of the eighteen chapters of Ulysses is introduced by a leading Joyce scholar. These richly informative pieces discuss the novel’s plot and allusions, while exploring crucial questions that have puzzled and tantalized readers over the last hundred years.’’
At 942 pages (excluding Illustrations, Maps, Contributors, Preface, Chronology of Joyce’s Life, Abbreviations, A Note on Annotations, Guide for Readers, Further Reading and Index of Recurrent Characters), it might warrant pointing out that this beautifully put together and very lavish book is rather large – quite simply because of the foray and the density of what actually took place on June 16, 1904.
Other than that, this is an astonishing piece of work and editing by Catherine Flynn.
It is a landmark in and of itself, which will no doubt, hold many a place of monumental pride upon any Joycean bookshelf.
A tale of sex and drugs and rock and roll and beer and fags and curry
By Ian Doeser
Self-Published – £15.75
Some of the gigs we’d been doing had been promoted by Pete Cousins, Pete had a mad lodger who at one point wanted to be our manager, his qualifications were: He looked like George Cole as Flash Harry, and he owned a briefcase with a plastic parrot attached to the handle (the briefcase along with his lunch got blown up by the bomb squad shortly afterwards).
(‘Early 80’s’).
I saw a picture of you on a kitchen cupboard in Berlin.
(Rich Millin, 2011).
Let the interplanetary dick waving commence.
(2020).
This rather brazen book is Swindon’s answer to cacophonous curry induced, rhythm’n’booze.
A read that is seemingly laced with all the innocent, precocious panache that only an ultra-fined-tuned memory laced with portentous mayhem will allow.
Reason being, there are those spurious, political memoirs of the dusty, old duffer variety ala Roy Jenkins’ A Life at the Centre: Memoirs of a Radical Reformer meets Roy Hattersley’s Who Goes Home – Scenes From A Political Life. And then there are those curious, musical memoirs of the dusty, old duffer variety ala Ozzy Osbourne’s I Am Ozzy meets Keith Richards’ Life.
It is just such well-considered, naughty nuggets, which account for this tremulous travelogue of show-time shenanigans being what they essentially are: twenty-seven chapters of slap-dash, boisterous remembered escapades. All of which are seeped amid the elongated struggle of rock’n’roll within the inexorably small-minded mentality of your everyday, average small town in southern England.
And said small town just happens to be Swindon, home of the nigh criminally under-rated, extrovert pop-purveyors known as XTC; which, given Doeser’s first-hand knowledge of the band’s early years, is something that may well propel the sales of A Big Fish In A Small Puddle way beyond the small puddle within which this book is essentially anchored – as the following heartily substantiates:
‘’I can remember bumping into Andy […], he was on a night out with his girlfriend (later his wife) and I was with Glen from The Aggravators. We all went for a late-night curry together after the club had shut down for the night. I suspect that Andy has a thing about foods that have names starting with the letter C, as in the 46 years that I’ve known him, I’ve only ever seen him eat Curry or Crisps.
[…].
Another time, I was having a lunch time drink in the bar attached to the club, when Terry appeared, and I got roped into helping unload the band’s gear into the club’s beer cellar, where they rehearsed at the time. They’d just been recording for the Magpie TV show, and along with the band’s gear, were three large, polystyrene letters, X, T and a C, which the TV show had made for their appearance, and the band took them home as mementoes. At the time, they thought that the odd TV appearance would be as far as it went, little did they know what was to come over the following few years.
[…].
At around about this time and long before the band themselves seemed to realise, due to some of the things going on regarding cut backs to touring expenses amongst other things (this was the period when the band were breaking through to the big time and lots of money was starting to come in) I realised something very dodgy was going on, involving Ian Reid and the band’s finances. When I spoke to a band member in the earely 80’s, when they seemed to permanently have singles or albums in the charts, we discovered that I was getting paid more than they did, for working in the factory that made the vinyl for the records they were selling by the thousands.
In 1980, they always seemed to be away somewhere in the world, so contact was sporadic, with the occasional visit to either Andy’s or Steve Warren’s flat. Then on a visit to Steve, I’d found out that he quite the band, due to Ian Reid’s shitty attitude and treatment of Steve, who deserved far more respect than the general dogsbody that Reid seemed to think he was. The last straw for Steve (as I found out fairly recently) was when he was expected to sleep in the van with the equipment for the entire duration of a long US tour (‘The XTC Connection’).
It does need to be said that the Names and Word Recognitions section at the back of the book is more thorough than a German train timetable; which, all things considered – especially given the genre – is no mean feat. One need only remind oneself of the altogether magnificent quote by the aforementioned Keith Richards, who once said: ‘’Whenever I want to remember what I was doing in the seventies, I just ask Bill.’’
Moreover, the likes of Bill’s forthright knowledge really isn’t required when it comes to this author’s altogether t-h-o-r-o-u-g-h memory. Not to mention wholesome thoughts with regards Britain’s more recent political climate: ‘’Was watching the news earlier and saw Michael Gove, what an ugly fucker, he takes chinless wonders to new extremes, I think the only humane thing to do would be to flatten the rest of his face with a sledgehammer, repeatedly’’ (2012).
Wonderful.
Written with exquisite innocence, and seemingly bereft of all the usual rock’n’roll, cliched trappings of wayward wank, A Big Fish In A Small Puddle is nigh meteoric within the parameters of musical memory.
‘’Hegel’s argument contributed to the development of a debate about Rousseau’s role in the course that the French Revolution took. Discussions, however, has long been confused, since Hegel’s argument was never that Rousseau caused the Revolution, nor even that he influenced some of its main protagonists. His point, instead, was that a conception of legitimacy, having crystallised in Rousseau, played a vital part in subsequent thinking about politics. The writings of Rousseau, like those of Kant, marked a reorientation in fundamental values. For Hegel this amounted to a profound intellectual sea-change.’’
(‘Absolute Freedom and Terror’).
Hegel began with the paradigmatic case of the Christian revolution, which had transformed the Judaic understanding of the Christian relationship between virtue and happiness In advancing his analyses, Hegel drew of the thought of Immanuel Kant. Like him, Hegel regarded Christianity as having ended in failure.
(Preface).
Key, at the very end of the second of the above two quotations are the words ‘’having ended.’’
That aside, there’s so much packed into Hegel’s World Revolutions, which really ought not come as any surprise; but hey, sometimes the obvious does need to be said.
And where better to start than with a continuation of the Preface: ‘’Hegel strove to work out a properly historical explanation. This set him on a trail of diagnosing a sequence of world-historical mishaps, including the Reformation and the French Revolution. Each of these adventures had misfired, Hegel contended, because they pitted an awakening of moral conscience against existing means of improving ethical life. It was above all the bankruptcy of the French Revolution that haunted Hegel’s philosophical career. For while he acknowledged that it encapsulated the moral ambitions of the age, he also regarded its mode of proceeding as having ensured its own destruction.’’
So here we have just a few words from this book’s Preface, which, correct me if I’m wrong, serves as boundless food for thought. Or contention. Or argument. Or analyses.
A more than astute example of said analyses being the following in chapter four’s ‘The Holy Roman Empire and the French Revolution,’ where this book’s author, Richard Bourke, contends: ‘’The echo of Montesquieu was deliberate. While Hegel had invested considerable effort in distinguishing his own idea of Geist from the metaphysical context in which Montesquieu had developed his notion of esprit, both concepts sought to pick out systematic historical relations driven by ‘inner’ or fundamental causes. The contemporary state of affairs, Hegel argued, was an external ‘appearance’ that should be explained in the light of a governing causal nexus reaching back into a more distant past. The state of the German Reich revealed a crumbling edifice in which the features of an emerging structure could be discerned’’
As Sally Sedgwick of Boston University has written: ‘’This is an ambitious and historically rich account of the motivations, reception and contemporary relevance of Hegel’s political thought. Richard Bourke’s lucid presentation brings Hegel’s ideas down to earth, clarifying them with great subtlety and accuracy. A highly impressive accomplishment.’’
Indeed it is.
Presented in three prime parts – The Kantian Revolution, Hegel and the French Revolution, The History of Political Thought – Hegel’s World Revolutions simply drips with ethical and moral implication. Its 299 pages (excluding the aforementioned Preface and Index) combine critical critique along with the sort of political philosophy that one has come to naturally align with such a brilliant mind as the man himself.
‘’We are not suited to the long perspectives,’’ wrote Phillip Larkin, that quintessentially English poet. But Milosz came by his telescopic vision naturally, or rather, through the force of circumstance.
The epiphany is of course consistent with his entire vision: his desire to grasp the essence of things; his belief that meaning inheres in the concrete and the particular and proceeds from it to deeper understanding. But given the circumstances in which it takes place, his description of the terrifying experience is almost eerily impersonal. Perhaps it is possible to understand his detachment as something that happens in moments of great danger: a kind of absenting of yourself from yourself, standing beside or outside or even above yourself, which has been described by many people who have faced a deadly threat.
It’s not the easiest thing trying to assimilate the all pervasive, dense depths of Czeslaw Milosz’s literary talent as a poet, and likewise (or perhaps, more of caveat) the analytical complexity of this profoundly honest and rather beautiful book.
Reason being, On Czeslaw Milosz, is a true treasure to both read and embrace.
It’s almost as if a reminder of a whole new awakening.
And beginning:
And yet the books will be there on the
shelves, separate beings…
…So much more durable
That we are, whose frail warmth
Cools down with memory, disperses,
perishes.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange
pageant,
Women’s dresses, dewy lilacs, a song in the
valley.
Yet the books will be there on the shelves,
well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance,
heights.
(‘And Yet The Books’).
Authoress, Eva Hoffman, clearly understands and relates to so much of the anguish amid that of Milosz’s writing. She is naturally reflective of his comportment, which may in part be due to the fact, that she too, is a Pole.
Either way, the following – which is unbearably tragic, yet heroic with regards the poem ‘In Warsaw’ – wholly underlines as much:
‘’’’You swore never to touch/The deep wounds of your nation’’: Milosz was aware of the strain of martyrology in Poland’s self-image – not entirely unfounded, given its history of partitions, Siberian exile, and violent Russian domination – as well as a tendency to Romantic heroism, which at the beginning of the war led the Polish cavalry to ride out against German tanks to the accompaniment of Chopin’s ‘‘Heroic’’ polonaise being broadcast on Polish radio. He was temperamentally averse to such transports of patriotism, but in the poem, restrained by the frame of form, are the anguish and sorrow he did not allow himself in most of his prose writings about the war. Why didn’t he? […]. The implication of the poem’s powerful metaphors are not reducible to literal explanations, but the force of feeling that drove Milosz’s poetry – and which is so evident here – surely exacted its price in the pain of pity and love as well as in scorn and rage.’’
As Ruth Padel, author of Beethoven Variations: Poems on a Life has since, succinctly stated: ‘’This brilliant and very personal book offers unique insights into one of the twentieth century’s most iconic poets. Drawing out Milosz’s experience of exile, the ideas that shaped his imagination, and the almost sacred significance he found in nature, Hoffman illuminates a body of poetry rooted in a divided Europe: ‘A home that refused to acknowledge itself as a whole.’’’
This very important book does indeed draw on the enormous legacy of Milosz’s profoundly, all-encompassing canon. A wonderful body of work which always seemed to somehow address society’s many challenges – especially in relation to pain, anguish and truthfulness.
The result of which began in an obscure corner of another Europe, yet concluded with a poet giving us the world.
The British Miner In the Age of De-Industrialization
A Political and Cultural History
By Jörg Arnold
Oxford University Press – £35.00
I must admit that we have lifted the status of the miners in a fantastic way during that period. Ten years ago nobody wanted to know us. Now everybody seems to want to be related to a miner.
(Joe Gormley, 1981).
And tomorrow brings another train
Another young brave steals away
But you’re the one I remember
From these valleys of green and the grey
(New Model Army, ‘Green and Grey,’ 1989).
The coal miners, like farmers in France, seem to have gained a peculiar hold on the British imagination: a muscular symbol of a lost era.
(The Economist, 1992).
I always remember the vile Margaret Thatcher referring to Britain’s miners as: ‘’the enemy within,’’ an equally vile and totally unwarranted statement that has always stayed with me. This partially explains my (inadvertent) undercurrent of affection for the miners, who, lest we need reminding, were, in years gone by. the committed backbone of British society.
Not only did they undertake a difficult and highly dangerous occupation, they were also the very same men who fought and died in the trenches of Northern France – for King and Country and for what?
To be literally starved back to work during the unspeakably bitter and unfair strike of 1984/5.
It is as former NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) President, Arthur Scargill said in 1998: ‘’People who go to cinemas and weep when they watch the film Brassed Off should recall that a promise was made to Britain’s miners to rectify the terrible wrong that had been wreaked upon Britain’s miners and Britain’s mining communities.’’
A book which is altogether lucid, in-depth, fair and exceedingly thorough when it comes to the ultimate big picture – as is not only substantiated in the second part of the book’s title, but the following: ‘’It is the relationship between broader ideas and self-images that this study sets out to disentangle. It asks about the interaction between social imaginaries and miners’ subjectivities in a period of accelerated socio-economic change. In doing so, it probes the significance of the figure of the coal miner for our understanding of contemporary British history. The book does not try to reveal the ‘real’ story of British miners behind the myths that circulated about them. Rather, it is an exploration of the intersection between the broader societal meaning ascribed to coal miners and their collective and individual self-images between c.1967 and 1997. The place of the miners in society was contested. Politicians, industrialists, experts, journalists, trade unionists, and individual mineworkers themselves were all engaged in shaping images and ideas of who the miners ‘really’ were, what motivated them, and what fears and hopes they held for the future. In examining these debates, the study opens up new ways of understanding contemporary British history’’ (Introduction).
Indeed these 292 pages (excluding Preface, List of Illustrations/Maps/Tables and Abbreviations, Appendix, Bibliography and Index), make for more than compelling reading; not only because it’s about the miners and how equate with society at large, but because of the book’s overall reasoned approach.
A fine example of which can be found in chapter eight’s ‘1992,’ where the author, Jörg Arnold, writes ‘’In the second half of the 1990s, the miners passed into history. While the people still employed in the industry moved out of public sight, the former coalfields became a laboratory for social engineering and social scientific research. To the Labour government, the way forward did not lie in reversing the policies of previous governments, but in ‘help[ing] old coal communities’ to move into the modern world. Coalfield communities represented a particularly intractable case of ‘social exclusion’ whose root cause was as much cultural as it was economic […] In the Task Force’s estimation, the very qualities that had given the coalfields their distinct sense of identity had become a formidable obstacle to moving into the future. ‘There is nowhere else like the coalfields,’ the report intoned, only to continue: Their long history as the engine of the nation’s industrialisation meant they developed a cohesion, a reliance on a single industry and an independent existence with few parallels. This was their greatest strength when the mines were producing and now it is their greatest weakness.’’
Informed, knowledgable, cohesive and deeply embedded within a social framework, The British Miner In the Age of De-Industrialization really is a great shining light of a book.
That said, I’d like to leave the final words to Paul Darlow (himself a former miner and strike activist) who has described it as: ‘’A beacon of how history should be approached.’’
As the above clearly substantiates, Albrecht Dürer was no poet, although we do need to remind ourselves of the degree to which the celebrated German artist’s work still continues to resonate with a particular, all pervasive power.
Let it be said that there may be no better to way to pursue said reminding than to fully embrace Dürer’s Lost Masterpiece – Art and Society At The Dawn Of A Global World. A book which draws on a decade of meticulous research, which unsurprisingly, brings to life the artist’s ‘’determined fight for creative makers to be adequately paid’’ by way of ultimately exploring how European societies (eventually) came to value the arts and crafts which remain relevant to this day.
Currently relevant in as much that Spotify et al, ought to take both note and learn a very valuable lesson here; which is that musicians, like artists, too deserve to be ‘’adequately paid’’ for their work and their time. For as is, musical creativity is currently/financially shunned – a rancid sate of affairs that I’m convinced Dürer would have something to say and shout about.
To a certain extent, it might be said that as much is clarified and underlined by Peter Burke of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, when he writes: ‘’Ulinka Rublack’s new book successfully combines a close reading of the sources for the life and work of Albrecht Dürer with a wide-ranging account of art as a luxury commodity at a time when the trade in luxuries was going global.’’
Sound familiar?
The result of which is a book that, rather than homing in on the extraordinary merit and value of Dürer’sartistry, essentially focuses on his elongated and rather plagued relationships with the era’s multitude of vexed and uninformed merchants – those who paid the bills by way of many a fraught commission.
It is this is that is essentially brought to bear throughout these 431 pages (excluding List of Illustrations, Digital Resources for Further Viewing and Reading and Index), an altogether pertinent example being the opening of chapter nine’s ‘Oil and Pigment,’ where Rublack writes: ‘’Throughout the correspondence with Heller, Dürer drew attention to painting as material process. He educated this merchant about the art of making an oil painting from start to finish, and how long different aspects took. Impatience would never pay off. Dürer wanted Heller to appreciate not just the expense of particular colour pigments but also the entire practice of painting as a skilful and time-consuming practice, which in turn he hoped would educate his patron about what was to be regarded as a fair price. ‘I feel my own way forward from one day to the next’ was how he described his growing understanding of rendering proportions and perspective. Consistency, purity, and technical precision mattered and this in turn depended on a deep knowledge of tools, instruments, his body, and materials.’’
Divided into four sections: Part One – Letters to Heller, Part Two – Tastemakers, Part Three – Dürer and the Global Commerce of Art, and Part Four – Shopping for Dürer in the Thirty Years’ War, authoress Ulinka Rublack has herein written and compiled a book that really does tick all the boxes so far as its subject is concerned. Even the 37.4 List of Illustrations at the very outset are overtly thorough in factual detail.
Moreover, the aforementioned ‘’consistency, purity, and technical precision’’ are aspects I personally would have welcomed a whole lot more of throughout Dürer’s Lost Masterpiece; rather than focusing so much unwarranted attention on the spurious succession of myopic merchants – whom I personally couldn’t care less about.
That said, it could be argued that the colourful illustrations throughout the book’s four parts, do go some way making up for the preponderance of non-artistic address.
Although admittedly, no-where near enough (it must be said).
David Marx:Book Reviews 