Dancing Senator

Pat Rogers, 7 November 1985

Memoirs of King George II: Vols I, II and III 
by Horace Walpole, edited by John Brooke.
Yale, 248 pp., £65, June 1985, 0 300 03197 1
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“... seen himself in a great or favourable one.’ Generally even his sourest observations carry some ring of truth: ‘Sir Thomas [Robinson] had been bred in German courts, and was rather restored than naturalised to the genius of that country: he had German honour, loved German politics, and could explain himself as little as if he spoke only German. He might ...”

Vienna discovers its past

Peter Pulzer, 1 August 1985

Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and their Experiences 
by Lewis Coser.
Yale, 351 pp., £25, October 1984, 0 300 03193 9
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The Viennese Enlightenment 
by Mark Francis.
Croom Helm, 176 pp., £15.95, May 1985, 0 7099 1065 7
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The Jews of Vienna, 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity 
by Marsha Rozenblit.
SUNY, 368 pp., $39.50, July 1984, 0 87395 844 6
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“... great reforming Mayor and Hitler’s mentor in the demagogic uses of anti-semitism, no part of the Ring, or any other street, was named after Freud. The telephone rang. Not at all, said a spokesman from the municipality: there is now a Sigmund Freud Park; there had been one for all of a fortnight, though this appeared to be the first public acknowledgement of ...”

Zest

David Reynolds: The Real Mrs Miniver, 25 April 2002

TheReal Mrs Miniver 
by Ysenda Maxtone Graham.
Murray, 314 pp., £17.99, November 2001, 0 7195 5541 8
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Mrs Miniver 
by Jan Struther.
Virago, 153 pp., £7.99, November 2001, 1 85381 090 8
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“... it with all that is in us! And may God defend the right!’ As the congregation sings ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, the RAF is glimpsed through the ruined church roof, flying out to do battle. Maxtone Graham claims that FDR was so stirred by the film’s closing sermon that he requested it be dropped over occupied Europe as a leaflet and broadcast to the ...”

Close Shaves

Gerald Hammond, 31 October 1996

Thomas Cranmer: A Life 
by Diarmaid MacCulloch.
Yale, 692 pp., £29.95, May 1996, 0 300 06688 0
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“... grasped at the last when his power of speech was gone to indicate the confirmation of his assured Christian belief. Legend has it that Cranmer grew the beard as a sign of mourning for the man who had given him power and authority, but, as MacCulloch shrewdly notes, there is another way of looking at the beard: ‘It was a break with the past for a clergyman ...”

California Noir

Michael Rogin: Destroying Los Angeles, 19 August 1999

Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster 
by Mike Davis.
Picador, 484 pp., £18.99, June 1999, 9780330372190
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“... recover far more easily than the white and coloured poor. Consider as an Armageddonist the Christian Coalition founder (and one-time candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination) Pat Robertson. A giant meteor and a mile-high tsunami destroy Los Angeles in his 1995 The End of the Age, leaving survivalists to battle Satan (now President of the ...”

Into Thin Air

Marina Warner: Science at the Séances, 3 October 2002

The Invention of Telepathy 
by Roger Luckhurst.
Oxford, 334 pp., £35, June 2002, 0 19 924962 8
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“... done, how it is that someone rings us at the very moment we’ve put our hand on the receiver to ring them. Modern media, he suggests, do not simply move the self in the form of the voice and image over distance, but give the eerie feeling of replicating the movement of thought itself. In his writing, telepathy keeps threatening to break its confines and ...”

Uppity Trumpet of the Living Light

Barbara Newman: Hildegard of Bingen, 20 January 2000

Secrets of God: Writings of Hildegard of Bingen 
edited by Sabina Flanagan.
Shambhala, 186 pp., £10.99, August 1998, 1 57062 164 0
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The Letters of Hildegard of Bingen: Vol. II 
translated by Joseph Baird.
Oxford, 215 pp., £36, October 1998, 0 19 512010 8
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Jutta and Hildegard: The Biographical Sources 
edited by Anna Silvas.
Pennsylvania State, 299 pp., £15.50, September 1998, 0 271 01954 9
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Physica 
by Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Priscilla Throop.
Healing Art, 250 pp., £19.99, August 1998, 0 89281 661 9
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On Natural Philosophy and Medicine 
by Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Margret Berger.
Brewer, 166 pp., £12.99, July 1999, 0 85991 551 4
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“... more in the 1980s, and for the last twenty years she has been the darling of early music lovers, Christian feminists, holistic health practitioners and New Age spiritual seekers. During her 900th birthday festivities in 1998, pilgrims flocked by the busload to the Rhineland abbey she founded, the home today of a flourishing Benedictine community. By the time ...”

Diary

Tim Salmon: On the Grèklu Ridge, 21 June 2001

“... operating in the Helimòdhi area. The adults can protect themselves, Miha tells me; they form a ring and bellow and rear and threaten with their horns, a hazard that bears appreciate. But on sloping ground they are in danger: the bear can use its agility and strength to push them over; the mothers with calves get isolated because they won’t abandon their ...”

Far-Right Wellness Product

James Meek: Romania’s Far Right, 19 February 2026

“... Jews. He kind of accepts this. But also he kind of doesn’t. Two men in particular, the fascist Christian terrorist and mystic Corneliu Codreanu, founder of the Legion of the Archangel Michael, later known as the Iron Guard, and Marshal Ion Antonescu, dictator during the Second World War, were responsible for the killing. Codreanu, strangled on royal orders ...”

The Italian Disaster

Perry Anderson, 22 May 2014

“... that the Bundeswehr contingent in Afghanistan was protecting German commercial interests; and Christian Wulff, the former Christian Democrat chief in Lower Saxony, over a questionable loan for his house from a friendly businessman. Two leading ministers, one of defence, the other of education, had to go when they were ...”

Diary

Jonathan Steele: In Syria, 22 March 2012

“... women could be seen in the throng and a small group of them stood just beyond it. ‘Welcome, Christian people,’ the first speaker shouted, addressing those women. The government claims the uprising is sectarian, a view its supporters are keen to disprove. ‘One, one, the Syrian people are one,’ the crowd chanted and the speaker roared: ‘This is ...”

One French City

Lydia Davis, 12 August 2021

“... was still Latin, and it was in Latin that he spoke to his congregation. Not all the population was Christian: there were also adherents of the Arian heresy and even pagans who still worshipped Jupiter.St Caesarius condemned a provision of Roman law, still practised at the time, which allowed a young man to keep, before his marriage, concubines whom he would ...”

Rising Moon

R.W. Johnson, 18 December 1986

L’Empire Moon 
by Jean-Francois Boyer.
La Découverte, 419 pp., August 1986, 2 7071 1604 1
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The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection 
by Edward Herman and Frank Brodhead.
Sheridan Square, 255 pp., $19.95, May 1986, 0 940380 07 2
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“... to his official biography, it was his initial success in gathering followers that led jealous Christian rivals to denounce him to the new Communist authorities, leading to further imprisonment and torture in a ‘re-education’ camp. Moon was certainly interned for a year but Korean Christian researchers claim to have ...”

O brambles, chain me too

Tom Paulin: Life and Vowels of Andrew Marvell, 25 November 1999

World Enough and Time: The Life of Andrew Marvell 
by Nicholas Murray.
Little, Brown, 294 pp., £20, September 1999, 0 316 64863 9
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Marvell and Liberty 
edited by Warren Chernaik and Martin Dzelzainis.
Macmillan, 365 pp., £47.50, July 1999, 0 333 72585 9
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Andrew Marvell 
edited by Thomas Healy.
Longman, 212 pp., £12.99, September 1998, 0 582 21910 8
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“... next stanza, as Marvell deploys with self-conscious confidence the obvious dualism of traditional Christian belief: Here at the fountain’s sliding foot, Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root, Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide: There like a bird it sits, and sings, Then whets, and combs its silver wings; And, till prepared ...”

Holocaust History

Geoff Eley, 3 March 1983

“... for ‘once again in their history the Jews are victims, sacrifices.’ At one level this has the ring of terrible, disquieting truth. But a sacral tone easily follows. Here is Emil Fackenheim, at a conference in Jerusalem in 1970: ‘A Jew knows about memory and uniqueness. He knows that the unique crime of the Nazi Holocaust must never be forgotten ...”