Parnassus, and patria

Tumuli at Revesby in Lincolnshire Sunken Island: An Anthology of British Poetry Various authors, edited by Alexander Adams, foreword by William Clouston, London: Bournbrook Press, 2022, pb, 55pps, £12.50 Bournbrook Press is an offshoot of Bournbrook Magazine, founded in 2019 to offer a “primarily British audience with traditionalist, socially conservative argument and entertainment”. This venture’s…

High treasures of the Low Countries

KMSKA: The Finest Museum The Holy Family by Rubens. KMSKA Patrick De Rynck (ed.), KMSKA, 2022, hardback, 256pp, fully illus., €45 KMSKA: The Finest Hundred Patrick De Rynck (ed.),KMSKA,2022, hardback, 288pp, fully illus., €45 Bruegel and Beyond: Netherlandish Drawings in the Royal Library of Belgium, 1500-1800 Daan van Heesch, Sarah Van Ooteghem, Joris Van Grieken…

Another American empire

Corpse of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico The Last Emperor of Mexico: A Disaster in the New World Edward Shawcross, Faber & Faber, January 2022, 336 pages, £20 KEN BELL reflects on a Mexico that might have been Mexico has only ever had one ruler who cared about the Indians and he was shot by order…

Cuba six decades later

Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Max Hastings, William Collins, September 2022, 576 pages, £30 KEN BELL recalls the Cold War’s most dangerous moment 2022 has been the sixtieth anniversary year of the Cuban Missile Crisis so a lot has been written about the event, with Max Hastings’ Abyss: The Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 being…

Overlooked Orpheans

STUART MILLSON enjoys some neglected gems of British music Why does the spiritual toll of the Great War seem to have been harsher for Britain than for any of the other European combatants, asks organist, scholar, music-writer Robert James Stove, in commentary for a booklet which accompanies a new CD on the Australian Ars Organi…

Wilko Johnson, 1947-2022

Wilko Johnson CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD remembers the first time he met Dr. Feelgood’s ace guitarist It’s a strange thing about biography. No matter how many facts are told, how many details are given or lists are made, the essential thing all too often resists telling. To say that so and so was born here, that he…

Sinfonia sparkle for austerity December

An American in Paris STUART MILLSON is transported to a warmer sound-world Any sense of malaise, austerity or winter gloom in London was dispelled for two hours (for those fortunate to be in attendance) by the Sinfonia of London’s 2nd December performance of Walton, Ravel, Dutilleux and Gershwin at the Barbican. Much praised by the…