- Don’t let England’s poujadists kill London’s golden goose
A desperate voice of sanity
- Morocco should stop sealing houses to punish activists
Human rights in the European neighbourhood.
- TPMDC Eight Fascinating Details From The Abbottabad Commission’s Report On Bin Laden Raid
Pakistani police stopped Osama Bin Laden for speeding – but let him go.
A long footnote on The Name of the Rose
“De pentagono Salomonis, Ars loquendi et intelligendi in lingua hebraica, De rebus metallicis by Roger of Hereford, Algebra by Al-Kuwarizmi, translated into Latin by Robertus Anglicus, the Punica of Silius Italicus, the Gesta francorum, De laudibus sanctae crucis by Rabanus Maurus, and Flavii Claudii Giordani de aetate mundi et bominis reservatis singulis litteris per singulos libros ab A usque ad Z,” my master read. “Splendid works. But in what order are they listed?” He quoted from a text I did not know but which was certainly familiar to Malachi: “‘ The librarian must have a list of all books, carefully ordered by subjects and authors, and they must be classified on the shelves with numerical indications.’ How do you know the collocation of each book?”
I'm pulling out this particular quote partly because it's a great example of something that looks like local colour but actually turns out to be fundamental to the plot, but mainly because it has a reference to Roger of Hereford, the medieval scholar on whom I was once an expert.
This moved me to look also at the other books mentioned.
- De pentagono Salomonis turns up again in Adso's dream on the sixth day, and it's a reasonable variant title of a well-enough known text normally called Pentaculum Salomonis.
- Ars loquendi et intelligendi in lingua hebraica is also a fairly well-known title, though I suspect it may cover more than one text.
- Algebra is the most famous of these books; it gave us the word "Algebra", and its author's name gave us the word "algorithm". The 12th-century Englishman who first translated it into Latin (and invented the term "sine" by accident) is usually referred to as Robert of Chester these days, to avoid confusion with the 13th-century Robertus Anglicus who wrote the first ever description of a weight-driven clock in about 1280.
- The Punica of Silius Italicus is available from Loeb in two volumes.
- The Gesta Francorum is available in English translation.
- De laudibus sanctae crucis is one of Rabanus Maurus' better known works.
- The last entry puzzled me for a bit though. "bominis", clearly there in my Kindle edition, is an obvious mistake for "hominis". That led me to this reference to a book with the same title but the author's name spelt with a couple fewer letters. Armed with that, I discovered that the author's name is probably wrong anyway and Wikipedia has this note on the book, which consists of successive volumes each of which is written without using a particular letter, a, b, c etc.
So of the books there are three scientific/magical treatises, three histories, a Hebrew textbook and a religious poem. I don't know what to read into that.
It does strike me, looking again at the introduction, that the story of Roger of Hereford's lost De rebus metallicis above is not all that different from Eco's own (fictional) account of his attempts to track down the story of Adso of Melk after losing the original version. Perhaps he knew after all?
And one last thing – the incorrect letters in Eco's rendition of the last book's title, "Flavii Claudii Giordani de aetate mundi et bominis reservatis" are the L in "Flavii", the first I in "Giordani" and the B in "bominis". Those are the first three letters of "liber" and "libro", the Latin and Italian words for "book" (hence the English "library", though in fact the Latin and Italian words for library are Bibliotheca/Biblioteca from Greek Βιβλιοθήκη). Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but if so, it's a nice coincidence.
June Books 22) The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
“My good Adso,” my master said, “during our whole journey I have been teaching you to recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to us like a great book. Alanus de Insulis said that and he was thinking of the endless array of symbols with which God, through His creatures, speaks to us of the eternal life. But the universe is even more talkative than Alanus thought, and it speaks not only of the ultimate things (which it does always in an obscure fashion) but also of closer things, and then it speaks quite clearly. I am almost embarrassed to repeat to you what you should know. At the crossroads, on the still-fresh snow, a horse’s hoofprints stood out very neatly, heading for the path to our left. Neatly spaced, those marks said that the hoof was small and round, and the gallop quite regular— and so I deduced the nature of the horse, and the fact that it was not running wildly like a crazed animal. At the point where the pines formed a natural roof, some twigs had been freshly broken off at a height of five feet. One of the blackberry bushes where the animal must have turned to take the path to his right, proudly switching his handsome tail, still held some long black horsehairs in its brambles…. You will not say, finally, that you do not know that path leads to the dungheap, because as we passed the lower curve we saw the spill of waste down the sheer cliff below the great south tower, staining the snow; and from the situation of the crossroads, the path could only lead in that direction.”
I first read this as a teenager and loved it then, and I love it even more now; a fantastic medieval mystery story, turned into a film starring Sean Connery and a young Christian Slater, buttressed by sly references to literature and philosophy throughout.
Things I got when I was a teenager: The Sherlock Holmes reference in the anem of William of Baskerville. The fantastic structure of the library mapping out the world in its own weird way. The careful construction of the actual mystery, in the best traditions of detective writers (in fact, rather better than a lot of Doyle or Christie). The heresy. The sex.
Things I didn't get but do now: The importance of the repeated theme of signs and symbols. The references to the history of philosophy and science. The reason why the blind ex-librarian is Jorge of Burgos. The fact that William's discourse on parliamentary democracy, based on the principles of scholastic philosophy, actually ties in with the contemporary de modo tenendi parliamentum.
I may be in a minority, but I also really like both the occasional descents into long lists of things, which is a decent nod towards the actual writing style of the time, and the introduction which furnishes the author's excuse for the rest of the book not being as authentic in style. A brilliant book and I will not wait twenty-five years before reading it again.
Links I found interesting for 07-07-2013
- Ancestral Rivers of the World
Wonderful geology (real).
- What If? The Ice Ages Had Been A Little Less Icy?
Fascinating geology (counterfactual).
- The Changing and Terrifying Nature of the New Cyber-Warfare
Geopolitics and cyberspace.
June Books 21) TARDIS Eruditorum Volume 3: Jon Pertwee, by Elizabeth Sandifer
I will admit, up front, that the Pertwee era is far from my favorite era of Doctor Who. And this is not an uncommon opinion in Doctor Who fandom. Though the heyday of Pertwee bashing came in the 1990s, it’s notable that when Time Unincorporated began collecting major essays from the fanzine scene it devoted an entire chapter to the Pertwee controversy. And while they admit that the controversy had largely dissipated, there is still something about the Pertwee era – something that isn’t true of either the Troughton or Hartnell eras – that invites a love-it-or-hate-it debate. It is, in many ways, the first controversial era of Doctor Who.
This is the third in the series of collected articles from Elizabeth Sandifer’s excellent blog, this time looking at the Pertwee era, of which Sandifer and I share the majority view among fandom – though it is not a crushing majority – that this is not Old Who’s finest period. But rather than whining about the stories, like I have done, Sandifer unpacks with some care why it is that the Third Doctor sometimes doesn’t quite work, often rather sympathetically, particularly to Pertwee himself, and also Katy Manning and Nicholas Courtney on whom the success of the stories often depends. I had previously read her essay on Moonbase 3 after watching the episodes; but in the context of the other essays showing what Dicks and Letts were trying to achieve, and why it barely worked in Who and didn’t work on the Moon in 2003, it makes a lot more sense. Basically her thesis is that the show was flitting uneasily between action and glam, though Dicks and Letts may not have been fully aware of this themselves.
There is also some brilliant additional coloration in the side essays on Monty Python and David Bowie, and the piece on The Three Doctors is an extended riff on William Blake which also quotes another William, my brother. As before, Sandifer explains better to me what I have seen on screen and makes me want to expand my reading / viewing (though in fact none of the non-TV Who referenced here, five books and two audios, were new to me).
Which is not to say that I completely agree with her. On a broad point, I find Sandifer’s overall tracking of the show’s history deterministic and almost Whiggish. To pull another quote, this time from the Planet of the Spiders essay:
Pertwee doesn’t regenerate because his time is past. He regenerates because he’s finally accomplished what his era set out to do in the first place.
It’s a nice peroration, but it is very much projecting the future onto the past as if it were inevitable (which is what I mean by Whiggish). Pertwee regenerated, fundamentally, because the actor decided / was persuaded to leave the show. The artistic judgements about where to take the story flowed partly from that fact and largely from other factors affecting the show’s creators, some of which we know about and some of which we don’t. And while it’s good and satisfying that towards the end of Planet of the Spiders, Pertwee’s Doctor has a moment of repentance and redemption before he dies, I think it’s a strong reading (which is to say, factually incorrect) to say that he regenerates because he has accomplished his mission – indeed, I wish that it were otherwise; I’d have preferred if this thought had been better integrated into the story as a whole, better yet the season as a whole, rather than just dragged in at the end.
And on a much more specific point, I agreed with almost all of Sandifer’s judgements of individual stories with the extraordinary exception of The Mutants, which most fans would put pretty far down the list of Pertwee stories and I would put firmly at the bottom. Sandifer praises it, though not terribly coherently, for its use of “spectacle”. I will allow it good use of location filming, but really not much more than that; in terms of spectacle, the transmogrification of Ky at the end is surely a botch? Its political messages are certainly botched, and so, rather more often than one can forgive, is the acting and directing.
Anyway, despite my occasional disagreements, another good addition to the thinking fan’s bookshelf.
June Books 20) Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
What I have been trying so hard to tell you all along is simply that my father, without the slightest doubt, was the most marvelous and exciting father any boy ever had.
This was a Dahl that I think I missed out on when I was younger; a very short story of a boy and his father, published in 1975 but surely set some decades earlier, in which the two launch a symbolic assault on the local capitalist’s citadel by drugging and stealing all his pheasants. It turns out that the entire of the local community – doctor, vicar, policeman, midwife – are all in on the poaching scam, so Danny appears to be involved with a community uprising against the local autocrat.
But in fact this political interpretation may not be right: Mr Hazell’s big crime is not being rich per se, but trying to impress people with his wealth; the worst things said of him involve him being rude to the villagers and trying to buy respect from other rich people. Hazell’s flaws are his ego and lack of sincerity; Danny’s father is completely genuine. So what at first seems an adventure story of a boy and a slightly older boy (his father) having a romp in the woods, and at second glance might be a political parable, is actually a moral tale of being true to yourself.
Three Men In A Boat, 1975 version with Tim Curry, Michael Palin, Stephen Moore
June Books 19) Something Borrowed, by Richelle Mead
A clatter of metal was the sole warning I had before a hole in the ceiling suddenly opened, and the Doctor came tumbling down to the floor, landing in an ungraceful heap of rainbow plaid. Nonetheless, he rose to his feet with all the dignity of an Olympic gymnast who’d just landed a perfect somersault.
The Puffin series of successive Doctor novellas continues with this June release by urban fantasy writer Richelle Mead featuring the Sixth Doctor. Unusually, she tells the story in the first person from Peri’s viewpoint; there are only a handful of Who books that use the direct voice of the Doctors or companions – I can think of Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure With The Daleks, Doctor Who and the Romans, Bunker Soldiers, Ghost Ship, Eye of Heaven, and The Last Dodo, and there’s also a very good short story from Peri’s point of view in one of the Big Finish collections. Indeed most of the above list are decent enough, and at least two are among the best Who novels (with one crashing dud that I will let you discover for yourselves), so it is surprising that writers don’t do it more often. (I am not counting books where the story is told in the first person by a non-regular character, and of course many of the audio plays use that approach, often very successfully.)
Anyway, this is short but sweet: Peri is a great character to write for anyway, I suspect, and the setting is a futuristic world where they do Las Vegas-style weddings, with the Doctor and Peri getting involved in a planned nuptial where it turns out that one of the prospective spouses is an old acquaintance. Not quite the best of this sequence, but far from the worst.
June Books 18) Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
We walked through town. Sylvie fixed her gaze six inches above eye level, but in fact no one stared, though many people glanced at us, and then glanced a second time. At the drugstore we passed Lucille and her friends, though Sylvie seemed not to notice. Lucille was dressed like all the others in a sweatshirt and sneakers and rolled-up jeans, and she looked after us, her hands stuck in her hip pockets.
This had been recommended to me here and here, so thanks to
Project Motor Mouth 2
F and I will be going.
June Books 17) Hunter’s Moon, by Paul Finch
He said he was a doctor. And he certainly looked like one, with his dickie-bow, patched tweed jacket and ridiculous, unmanageable hair. But a doctor? Here? And where was here?
I’m sorry to start the day with two petulant reviews, and I promise the next will be more positive. This is the last of the Eleven/Rory/Amy novels, and probably one you can skip; there are lots of quite good elements – some very well realised aliens and cyborgs, and a slap at the easy target of reality television; I think Finch also captures Smith’s Doctor rather well. But the basic scenario, of people being kidnapped to become prey in a grand hunt, is pretty cliched by now, having been done slightly better in The Five Doctors and much better in a Tenth Doctor novel, The Doctor Trap; of course all of these are rooted in The Most Dangerous Game. I did not think that the horror of the situation was adequately reflected in the prose; I also thought the main non-Tardis crew sub-plot, the redemption of a failed London copper’s relationship with his family through his heroism, was handled too superficially. In general this felt like an book with adult themes being written for younger readers, and there was a failure to connect style with substance.
There were other minor implausibilities which pushed my own buttons, such as an Albanian character (who disappears as soon as he is mentioned) called Miklos; just possible if he was named after a Hungarian friend or relative, but Mëhill is the usual Albanian translation of Michael, and even that is not very common.
It is a rare lapse in quality of the New Series Adventures, which after a dodgy start in the Eleventh Doctor era became generally much better than this. It was released at the time of broadcast of The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, at the same time as ‘s much better The Way Through the Woods and James Goss’s superb Dead of Winter), both of which I strongly recommend instead.
June Books 16) Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, by Ivan Petrus Adriaenssens
I had very high hopes for this graphic novel about the first world war; it won both the 2012 Prix Saint-Michel for best Dutch-language comic (in Belgium), and the 2011 Stripschapsjaarprijs (for the Netherlands and Flanders) in the Dutch-language literary category (that’s literary as opposed to action and yoof which are also Stripschapsjaarprijs categories). It has been translated into English as The Nieuport Gathering (which isn’t a great translation – “afspraak” is closer to “appointment” in meaning, and “appointment” is closer to what actually happens in the book), with the author’s name shortened to Ivan Petrus.
The story is a gritty documentary-style recreation of the war zone around Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast, just after the sluice gates on the Yser were opened to halt the German advance in 1914. Three soldiers, one English, one Belgian and one French, meet by the blasted defences on 1 November and agree to meet up there every ten years into the future. Another English soldier later hears the story from his fellow-countryman and decides that he too will try to keep the appointment. The framing narrative is set sixty years later in 1974, as the fourth soldier, his grand-daughter and her Belgian boyfriend track down what happened to the other three. The historical detail is meticulous – the three main characters were all in fact real people, Raoul Snoeck of the Belgian publishing family, the poet T.E. Hulme, and a moderately famous French marine commando, Jean-Marie Le Blic; and the landscapes both of devastating wartime and of more peaceful years afterwards are beautifully detailed, the war scenes normally in a muddy monochrome, the modern points a bit more tinted.
But I am afraid I was rather disappointed. I find it significant that the publicity around the book tends to emphasise the fact that it is based on historical facts rather than that it might be a good story in itself. While the landscapes are great, the people often rather less so; the frame I’m using above shows De Blic (of whom no actual photograph survives) leading a raid, and I find the humans in it poorly drawn and unrealistically posed; surely, even in 1914, commandos would creep rather than charge into such a mission? It is as if the concept of taking cover had never been invented! I also felt that the stories told, while of course moving tales of gallantry and tragic waste of life, didn’t actually take us much further than the war stories of The Victor comic of my childhood. There is little reflection on why these four soldiers ended up in the war, and none at all about the Germans. I actually found the postscript, detailing Adriaenssens’ research into the period, more engaging than the rest of the book.
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort isn’t actually bad, but with the coming centenary, we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing and I hope some of it is better.
Links I found interesting for 05-07-2013
- Sci-Fi Author Iain M. Banks Gets Asteroid Named after Him
#somethinginmyeye
Wednesday reading (a little late)
Current:
Harvest of Time [Doctor Who] by Alastair Reynolds (halfway through)
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (two thirds through)
Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Last books finished
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (finished on the way home last night; if I had done this post on schedule, it would have been in current reading)
Next books
A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clézio
Confessions of Zeno, by Itali Svevo
The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
Books acquired in last week:
None!
LT Unread books tally: 451 – up from last week, despite no new books, because “Unread” tags were not being tallied with “unread”.
Captions please, especially on the last frame (ages added for info)
Women of colour writing for Doctor Who
Will Malorie Blackman be the first?
I haven’t gone through this list in detail – compiling it was hard enough work – but I suspect she may be.
(I can think of two male writers of colour who have written televised episodes of Who and its spinoffs – Glen McCoy and Noel Clarke. There may well be others.)
The King’s Speech
(Looking at Egypt to see if we can make it two heads of state in one day…)
From Norman Davies’ History of Europe:
The EU explained
There are a few errors here – notably, Sweden doesn’t have an opt-out from the euro, it’s simply not got around to joining – but the general point is clear.
Test your language skills
In English, French, German and Spanish, at http://www.languagelevel.com/ – I got C2 in English (phew!), C1 for French and German, and didn’t get past the first question in Spanish…
Links I found interesting for 02-07-2013
- Welcome Croatia
EU Commissioners (with one notable exception) welcome Croatia to the EU in their own languages.
Wednesday reading
Current:
Kraken, by China Mieville
Standing in Another Man's Grave, by Ian Rankin
The Monsters and the Critics, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
Last books finished
Spend Game, by Jonathan Gash
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Misschien, by Kristof Spaey and Marc Legendre
Nooit, by Kristof Spaey and Marc Legendre
Ooit, by Kristof Spaey and Marc Legendre
Next books
The History of the Hobbit, vol 1: Mr Baggins, by John D. Rateliff
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson
Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak
[Doctor Who] The Wages of Sin, by David A. McIntee
Books acquired in last week:
Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
LT unread books tally: 436.
Brussels welcomes Croatia
Berlaymont display:
And the Portuguese restaurant across the road is offering punjene paprike (Croatian stuffed peppers):
June Books
I am behind with blogging, due to a bad back for the last week or so which meant reading was much easier than writing.
[one unlisted]
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw
PR Urban Elections in Ulster 1920, by Alec Wilson
Miradal: Erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud, by Hans Baeté, Marc De Bie, Martin Hermy, Paul Van den Bremt and Sara Adriaenssens
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 3: Jon Pertwee, by Philip Sandifer
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 14)
The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
SF (non-Who) 3 (YTD 36)
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig
Starship Fall, by Eric Brown
Doctor Who 5 (YTD 32)
Rags, by Mick Lewis
Head Games, by Steve Lyons
EarthWorld, by Jacqueline Rayner
Hunter's Moon, by Paul Finch
Something Borrowed, by Richelle Mead
Comics 3 (YTD 16)
Clockworks (Locke & Key Vol 4), by Joe Hill
Saga, vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, by Ivan Adriaenssens
~5,700 pages (YTD 30,500)
7/22 (YTD 30/117) by women (Mendlesohn, Sara Adriaenssens, Robinson, Collins, Rayner, Mead, Staples)
2/22 (YTD 4/117) by PoC (Eng, Staples [I think])
Rereads: The Name of the Rose – 1 (YTD 6); I don't think I had read all of Danny the Champion of the World before.
Acquired 2011 or before: 8 (YTD 40) – Danny the Champion of the World, EarthWorld, Head Games, The Name of the Rose, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, Housekeeping, Rags, one other
Acquired 2012: 2 (YTD 17) – Starship Fall
Acquired 2013: 12 (YTD 60) – Catching Fire, The Garden of Evening Mists, Miradal erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud, Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, Hunter's Moon, Clockworks, Saga V 1, Blackbirds, The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, PR Urban Elections in Ulster 1920, TARDIS Eruditorum 3, Something Borrowed
Reading now:
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
Coming Next (perhaps):
A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Katherine Swynford, by Jeannette Lucraft
Kraken, by China Mieville
The Flood, by Ian Rankin
The Monsters and the Critics, by J R R Tolkien
The History of the Hobbit v. 1: Mr Baggins, by John D. Rateliff
Shakespeare's Planet, by Clifford D. Simak
Rebus's Scotland: A Personal Journey, by Ian Rankin
The Tunnel at the End of the Light, by Stefan Petrucha
The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright, by Bryan Talbot
The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, by W. R. Telford
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
The Moment of Eclipse, by Brian Aldiss
Harvest of Time, by Alastair Reynolds
The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
Vanishing Point, by Stephen Cole
Plague of the Cybermen, by Justin Richards
Good heavens, I have the 25th highest rated livejournal!
That is, on their new social capital algorithm (non-Cyrillic); I am just behind
For whatever that is worth. As I said during the Klout debacle, any attempts to reduce one person’s impact to a single number should be treated with suspicion; I also note that when I first checked the LJ ratings a week ago I wasn’t even listed on this scale, despite having ticked all relevant boxes. But it’s a data point I suppose.
(Sorry for lack of posting this week – my back went out on Friday a week ago and I have been trying to keep up with other stuff.)
Wednesday reading
Current:
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (almost finished)
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (just started)
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (just started)
Last books finished
Miradal: Erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud, by Hans Baeté, Marc De Bie, Martin Hermy, Paul Van den Bremt and Sara Adriaenssens
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, by Ivan Adriaenssens
Hunter’s Moon, by Paul Finch
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 3: Jon Pertwee, by Philip Sandifer
Something Borrowed, by Richelle Mead
Next books
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clézio
Books acquired in last week:
Something Borrowed, by Richelle Mead
LT Unread books tally: 447
Links I found interesting for 25-06-2013
- Open Season for Data Fishing on the Web: The Challenges of the US PRISM Programme for the EU
@CEPS_thinktank in rapid response mode!
Finding the tree
Way back in February 2006, I helped F with the ceremonial planting of his municipal tree.
The commune dedicates trees to all the children turning seven in each calendar year. Most people pick up their trees for their own garden; we don’t really have room, so opted to have it planted in the municipal garden. We were the only people to turn up to do the planting in person, along with two municipal gardeners and the journalist who took this picture.
I went back today to try and find it, and I think we succeeded:
F is now more than twice as old as he was in February 2006, and he has clearly grown more than the tree has!
June Books 15) Miradal: Erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud
De geschiedenis van een bos en een landscap is het resultaat van samenwerking tussen verschillende vakgebieden. Voorjaarsbloemen en archeologisch erfgoed hangen bijvoorbeeld beide af van de bodem. Het verhaal van prachtig gekleurde loopkevers die 'gevangenzitten' in een oud bos omdat ze hun vliegvermogen verloren hebben, is een boeiende mengeling van biologie en geschiedenis.
The history of a woodland and a landscape is the result of cooperation between difference disciplines. For instance, spring flowers and archaeological monuments both depend on the soil. The story of beautifully coloured beetles, 'imprisoned' in the old woodland because they have lost the ability to fly, is a fascinating mixture of biology and history.
This is a big beautiful book about the woodland near our house, which I have already been using to locate nearby tumuli. Despite the gorgeous illustrations, it's not really a coffee-table book, with eight very carefully researched chapters about various aspects of the area's history and ecology. Given my own interests, I admit I found the geology and history more interesting than the biology bits (I have difficulty telling an oak from a rhododendron), but even so it was pretty interesting.
In particular, I love the idea of hidden landscapes; the first chapter on the geology drew my attention to things like the London-Brabant massif (here just the "Brabantse sokkel", but looking it up led me also to the lost continent of Avalonia) and the Diestian Sea. It's also interesting to reflect that the number of tumuli, both Bronze Age and Iron Age, and various other Gallo-Roman remains in the woods, all suggest that the woods themselves are a comparatively recent historical development and that much of the area was in fact agricultural in ancient times. Historical maps show the woods actually advancing over the last few centuries. (Ents? Triffids?)
It is, I'm afraid, all in Dutch, edited by Hans Baeté, Marc De Bie, Martin Hermy, Paul Van den Bremt and Sara Adriaenssens, and published by the Davidsfonds, as part of their wider project of promoting Flemish culture and heritage: a good example of this sort of thing.
June Books 14) The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash
The canal runs straight from the landing-stage into the heart of what is left of Torvello’s great square. Now it’s not even a village green. The great stone arches of the fifteenth century bridges, the dazzling fondamento, the might of empire literally fallen and overgrown.
This is a reasonably good illustration of both the strengths and weaknesses of the Lovejoy books. On the plus side, Gash actually uses both Lovejoy’s home setting in East Anglia, for the first quarter of the book, and then a richly imagined Venice where he becomes part of an industrial scale forgery operation, the details of the manufacturing fake antiques outlined in all their loving complexity. On the downside, women continue to throw themselves at Lovejoy for no apparent reason, he continues to treat them abominably, and the actual forgery plan is baroque to far beyond any point of plausibility, and the supposedly comic ending is almost identical to that of The Vatican Rip, published three years earlier. I think those who don’t know the Lovejoy novels could take this as a fair sample of what they are like.