Fraternity

Nicholas Penny, 8 March 1990

The Image of the Black in Western Art. Vol. IV, Parts I-II: From the American Revolution to World War One 
by Hugh Honour.
Harvard, 379 pp., £34.95, April 1989, 9780939594177
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Primitive Art in Civilised Places 
by Sally Price.
Chicago, 147 pp., £15.95, December 1989, 0 226 68063 0
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The Return of Cultural Treasures 
by Jeanette Greenfield.
Cambridge, 361 pp., £32.50, February 1990, 0 521 33319 9
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... of pathetic, docile subservience and black inferiority’. The motto, or slogan, ‘echoed both Christian beliefs in the equality of mankind before God and enlightened theories of natural law’, as Honour observes, but it cannot be considered so congenial to white philanthropists’ conviction of their superiority. Brotherhood – fraternité, – soon ...

Allendistas

D.A.N. Jones, 5 November 1992

Death in Chile: A Memoir and a Journey 
by Tony Gould.
Picador, 277 pp., £15.99, July 1992, 0 330 32271 0
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Some write to the future 
by Ariel Dorfman, translated by George Shivers and Ariel Dorfman.
Duke, 271 pp., £10.95, May 1992, 0 8223 1269 7
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... the end of Gould’s Cambridge period, in 1964, Eduardo Frei won the Presidential election for the Christian Democrats in Chile: this decent, respectable election was too boring for Huneeus, who had supported the left-wing Salvador Allende. Huneeus wrote to Gould: ‘Our candidate lost, as you may have learnt in one of your few moments of ...

The Road to Chandrapore

Eric Stokes, 17 April 1980

Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and their Critics 
by Kenneth Ballhatchet.
Weidenfeld, 199 pp., £9.50, January 1980, 0 297 77646 0
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Queen Victoria’s Maharajah: Duleep Singh 1838-1898 
by Michael Alexander and Sushila Anand.
Weidenfeld, 326 pp., £9.95, February 1980, 0 297 77656 8
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... the ‘licensed harlots’ neatly positioned between the European soldiers’ lines and the native Christian church. Dyer also unearthed an indiscreet document of the officer commanding the Second Cheshire Regiment, suitably headed in military jargon ‘Requisition for Extra Attractive Women for Regimental Bazar (Soldiers)’, in which the Ambala cantonment ...

Don’t do what Allende did

Greg Grandin: Allende, 19 July 2012

Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War 
by Tanya Harmer.
North Carolina, 375 pp., £38.95, October 2011, 978 0 8078 3495 4
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... Socialist and Communist Parties, social democrats and a leftist faction that had split from the Christian Democrats, he had more than a million. The alliance was called Popular Unity, echoing the earlier Popular Front, but Allende made it clear that what Chileans meant by democracy had changed since the 1930s: ‘We do not want a repetition of the Popular ...

In their fathers’ power

Jasper Griffin, 15 October 1987

A History of Private Life. Vol. I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium 
edited by Paul Veyne.
Harvard, 670 pp., £24.95, May 1987, 0 674 39975 7
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The Roman World 
edited by John Wacher.
Routledge, 2 pp., £100, March 1987, 0 7100 9975 4
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The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture 
edited by Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller.
Duckworth, 231 pp., £24, March 1987, 0 7156 2145 9
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Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt 
by Lisa Manniche.
KPI, 127 pp., £15, June 1987, 0 7103 0202 9
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... between themselves and the pagan world.’ Parallels can indeed be found between much of Christian teaching and the sentiments of virtuous pagans in late antiquity, but this emphasis, and especially the Augustinian doctrine that all sexual activity without exception was tainted by the fall and could be seen as a paradigm of sin in general, brought in ...

Do It and Die

Richard Horton, 20 April 1995

Soundings 
by Abraham Verghese.
Phoenix, 347 pp., £18.99, May 1994, 1 897580 26 6
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... should be excluded from schools. Intolerance is institutionalised; it is the ordinary language of Christian fundamentalists, and fundamentalists are the human infrastructure of the southern United States. Or so it seems at first blush. Tennessee is a small state with an ignominious past. In 1860, one quarter of its population were slaves and the slave-trade ...

At The Thirteenth Hour

William Wootten: David Jones, 25 September 2003

Wedding Poems 
by David Jones, edited by Thomas Dilworth.
Enitharmon, 88 pp., £12, April 2002, 1 900564 87 4
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David Jones: Writer and Artist 
by Keith Alldritt.
Constable, 208 pp., £18.99, April 2003, 1 84119 379 8
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... counterparts . . . inevitably fell for a revival of decadent Rome and the slave culture of the pre-Christian world.’ Jones bridges the small gap between Gill and Oswald Spengler. ‘Who will be our witness but the/blackamoors in novissimo die’ is an invocation of the Day of Judgment, but it is also the vision of Man and Technics, in which Spengler ...

Des briques, des briques

Rosemary Hill: On British and Irish Architecture, 21 March 2024

Architecture in Britain and Ireland: 1530-1830 
by Steven Brindle.
Paul Mellon, 582 pp., £60, November 2023, 978 1 913107 40 6
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... Henry VII’s long-lost palaces stood at Richmond and Greenwich, and at Burbage in Wiltshire, John Seymour was starting work on his expensive new house, Wolfhall. Hilary Mantel’s trilogy, like the musical Six and innumerable historical novels and films before and since, owes its popularity to the fact that ‘Tudors and Stuarts’ is still for many ...

Beware Bad Smells

Hugh Pennington: Florence Nightingale, 4 December 2008

Florence Nightingale: The Woman and Her Legend 
by Mark Bostridge.
Viking, 646 pp., £25, October 2008, 978 0 670 87411 8
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... day: Palmerston, Macaulay, Charles Darwin and Annabella Milbanke. In her twenties she came to know Christian von Bunsen, the Prussian ambassador in London, founder of a Protestant hospital in Rome and a German one in London, staffed by deaconesses from a Lutheran establishment at Kaiserswerth, near Düsseldorf. Although Nightingale’s chosen vocation was ...

Sharks’ Teeth

Steven Mithen: How old is the Earth?, 30 July 2015

Earth’s Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters 
by Martin Rudwick.
Chicago, 360 pp., £21, October 2014, 978 0 226 20393 5
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... geology would amplify or clarify the biblical account. In this way, one could be both a devout Christian and a scientist, as William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick, the two leading British geologists of the 19th century, were. Of course, biblical literalism resurged periodically, notably in the US. But the majority of scientists just got on with their ...

I want to be queen

Michael Wood: Rimbaud’s High Jinks, 19 January 2023

The Drunken Boat: Selected Writings 
by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Mark Polizzotti.
NYRB, 306 pp., £16.99, July 2022, 978 1 68137 650 9
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... Speaking​ of his remarkable version of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, John Ashbery said: ‘I myself try to be very literal, and I frequently use cognates even when they might sound a little strange in English.’ ‘Are there times when that doesn’t work?’ his interviewer, Claude Peck, asked. Ashbery replied without hesitation: ‘Oh sure, on every page, many times ...

The Great Mary

Dinah Birch, 13 September 1990

Mrs Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian 
by John Sutherland.
Oxford, 432 pp., £16.99, August 1990, 0 19 818587 1
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... an eating insecurity, a covetous desire to earn acceptance and approval from those in authority. John Sutherland points to this paradox as the driving force behind Mary Ward’s extraordinary career. He isn’t inclined to condone the various obstinacies that made ‘The Great Mary’ (Pound’s term) so scorned among the writers who followed her. Her moral ...

Anti-Anti-Racism

Ann Dummett, 9 July 1987

Anti-Racism: An Assault on Education and Value 
edited by Frank Palmer.
Sherwood, 210 pp., £9.95, November 1986, 0 907671 26 8
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The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain 
by Ron Ramdin.
Gower, 626 pp., £35, January 1987, 0 566 00943 9
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... racial politics as a weapon. One ideology sees a free, democratic Britain, united by a common Christian culture and important traditions and values – a pretty good place on the whole. Criticism of it is fair enough, since criticism is part of free speech, but it should not degenerate into demands for revolution or even social engineering. This Britain ...

One’s Thousand One Nightinesses

Steven Connor: ‘The Arabian Nights’, 22 March 2012

Stranger Magic 
by Marina Warner.
Chatto, 540 pp., £28, November 2011, 978 0 7011 7331 9
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... in print, the stories had been circulating for centuries, crossing the borders between the Christian and Islamic worlds, and commuting fluently between tongue and pen. The many narrative tributaries first came together in a single stream when the French scholar and antiquarian Antoine Galland used a 14th or 15th-century Syrian manuscript he had brought ...

The Honoured Society

Edward Luttwak, 10 October 2013

Mafia Republic: Italy’s Criminal Curse: Cosa Nostra, Camorra and ’Ndrangheta from 1946 to the Present 
by John Dickie.
Sceptre, 524 pp., £25, May 2013, 978 1 4447 2640 4
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... because almost anyone can be accused of ‘association’, including the slew of former Christian Democrat politicians who have been charged and prosecuted. The most prominent Sicilian politician, the former minister (multiple times) and later senator Calogero Mannino was tried several times on that charge before his case finally reached the ...