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Book reviews
Alexandria: The City that Changed the Word by Islam Issa: A Review
Islam Issa: Alexandria: The City that Changed the World. Sceptre Books, 2023 Islam Issa, the author of this expansive history of Alexandria, spent his childhood in his native city. His Alexandrian descent through the male line was unequalled. His father’s “ancestry test revealed a staggering 97.5 percent near to the…
The Roads to Rome by Catherine Fletcher: A Review
Catherine Fletcher: The Roads to Rome, A History, The Bodley Head, London, 2024, reviewed by Charles Freeman Simone Quilici, one of my former pupils (when I taught the International Baccalaureate History programme), is now director of the Via Appia, which stretches in its original paved state outside Rome. I was…
Medieval Horizons
Ian Mortimer, Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter, The Bodley Head, 2023. Reviewed by Charles Freeman When do the Middle Ages begin and end? I think AD 500 is a good starting point, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476. Many studies do not get going…
Book Review: The Bookseller of Florence
Four hundred and eighty pages might seem a lot to fill, when one has chosen as one’s subject a man about whom next to nothing is known. But Ross King, in this ambitious book published last year, has managed to fill them nonetheless, and the result is eminently readable. Vespasiano…
Book Review: ‘The Art Museum in Modern Times’
This new book by Charles Saumarez Smith (Thames & Hudson, 2021) is a fascinating look at how museums, their mission and their vision, have evolved over the past half-century. Forty-two museums are explored; the choice is personal, focusing on institutions that the author knows well, without any aim to be…
Book review: Lost Prestige
Lost Prestige, by historian, diplomat and former Hungarian Foreign Minister Géza Jeszenszky, now published in English translation, is a book about reputation. Using British perceptions of Hungary in the years leading up to the First World War, it seeks to examine more broadly the relationships between states, and how international…
Modernists and Mavericks
By Martin Gayford. ‘After the war, because everybody who was about had escaped death in some way, there was a curious feeling of liberty. It was sexy in a way, this semi-destroyed London. There was a scavenging feeling of living in a ruined city.’ This is the reflection of Frank…
Dracula: An International Perspective
The first thing you need to do, before beginning to consult this book in any detail, is to re-read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. If you haven’t read it, this volume of essays will inspire you to do so; but you will enjoy the essays much more if the story is fresh…
Living with Leonardo
Some time ago I was sitting next to a retired surgeon at a dinner party. I asked him how he filled his time. He told me that he had discovered the anatomical drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and was so astonished by their accuracy that he had taken to lecturing…
Heroism on the Danube
Ingrid Carlberg: Raoul Wallenberg: The Heroic Life of the Man Who Saved Thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Translated Ebbe Segerberg. Maclehose Press, 2016 The name of Raoul Wallenberg is well-known in Budapest today: there is a street named after him; two statues stand to his memory; and there is…
Fleming and Honour Remembered
Susanna Johnston, John Fleming and Hugh Honour Remembered. Gibson Square, London, 2017. John Fleming and Hugh Honour’s A World History of Art (1982 and later editions, the 7th as recently as 2009) was one of those books one had to have on one’s shelves. My copy, now 30 years old,…
A Time in Rome
Elizabeth Bowen: A Time in Rome. Reviewed by Charles Freeman. Originally published by Longman (1960). Reissued by Vintage Books. I wonder how much the novelist Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) is read now? Bowen was of Anglo-Irish stock, a fine but delicate writer acutely attuned to the cadences and concealments of an…
Diana Athill, ‘A Florence Diary’
Diana Athill, A Florence Diary. Granta, 2016.Reviewed by Charles Freeman This is an amuse-bouche of a book, just 40 pages from a notebook recording the author’s visit to Florence in the late summer of 1947. By sheer coincidence I found myself reading it on Diana Athill’s hundredth birthday, December 21st,…
Italian island food
Matthew Fort: Summer in the Islands, An Italian Odyssey. Unbound Press, London, 2017.Reviewed by Charles Freeman. Matthew Fort, distinguished writer on food and all the conviviality that accompanies it, fell in love with Italy through its ice cream at the age of eleven. The relationship has lasted and has developed…
Rogues’ Gallery by Philip Hook
Philip Hook: Rogues’ Gallery: A History of Art and its Dealers. Profile Books, London, 2017. In May 2017, I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston for the second time. Housed in a neo-Renaissance palazzo with courtyards and galleries, it is crammed—one might say cluttered—with the extraordinary collection of…
Guide to the Via Francigena
The Via Francigena in Northern Lazio. Map and guide in English from the Touring Club Italiano, Itineraries on Foot series. Reviewed by Charles Freeman. The Via Francigena, the road of the Franks towards Rome, has been known for over a thousand years since Sigeric, the Archbishop of Canterbury, decided to…
Life, Art and Kenneth Clark
The impact of Kenneth Clark, the erudite patrician raconteur of the episodes of Civilisation, his majestic survey of European art first shown on the BBC in 1969, will always resonate with those who watched him. He adopted an unashamedly elitist approach that was delivered in a memorably clipped voice. ‘Civilisation’,…
Hedonist’s travel, Hungarian wine
“Robert Smyth’s Hungarian Wine … is a really pleasurable wine book and hedonist’s travel guide. It would make a great Christmas present for almost anyone who is interested in good wine and travel.” A nice review from wine blogger Quentin Sadler: A Lovely Wine Book for Christmas Posted on 16/12/2016 by…
Remarkable Manuscripts
by Christopher de Hamel. How does one “meet” a medieval manuscript? The examples explored in this book are such celebrities that effecting a face-to-face encounter needs a lot of arranging. It helps if you are a world authority like Christopher de Hamel. Having worked for years at Sotheby’s, he has…
The Roman Forum Reconstructed
Book review of Gilbert J. Gorski and James E. Packer, The Roman Forum: A Reconstruction and Architectural Guide, Cambridge University Press, 2015. It needed quite a lot of collaboration between kind friends before I could own a copy of this book. It is a lavishly detailed and illustrated study of…
