This is a labour of love. Flannery provides plans and architectural elevations of 50 towers of medieval parish churches (with and without spires).
These are beautiful in themselves, and his accompanying descriptions are superbly acute, detailed, and perceptive. This is a book, like Ruskin’s Stones of Venice, that makes you see buildings afresh, and better. England is the top country for towers, and this is the top book about them. It’s a book to return to again and again.
This book - an astonishing achievement following five years of detailed and original research - presents the first systematic survey of the fifty most important medieval parish church towers and spires in England, covering a period of some five hundred years. The introduction provides an overview of the technological and aesthetic development of towers and spires, and examines the evolution of their major architectural elements. The process of medieval steeple construction is also explored. The main part of the book is devoted to a richly illustrated survey of the fifty most important…
Is Stallings, an American who lives in Greece, the best poet now writing in English? I think she may be.
This new collection reprints poems from her previous slim volumes. Her verse is often about quotidian and domestic life, and she combines wit with depth. Her craftsmanship is superb, with brilliantly agile use of language, and she is the most interesting rhymer since Louis MacNeice. She also draws sometimes on Greek mythology.
Friends reading her for the first time have told me how astonished they are that they hadn’t heard of her. Hers is a unique voice, and a compelling one.
Selected Poems brings together poetry from A. E. Stallings's four acclaimed collections, Archaic Smile, Hapax, Olives, and Like, as well as a lagniappe of outlier poems. Over time, themes and characters reappear, speaking to one another across years and experience, creating a complex music of harmony, dissonance, and counterpoint. The Underworld and the Afterlife, ancient history and the archaeology of the here and now, all slant rhyme with one another. Many of these poems unfold in the mytho-domestic sphere, through the eyes of Penelope or Pandora, the poet or Alice in Wonderland. Fulfilling the promise of the energy and sprezzatura…
For a lot of readers, like me, Taylor (1912-75) is a fairly recent discovery.
A fine novelist, she is also one of the best short story writers in the language, and she went on getting better. She is beautifully economical and controlled; she studies failure and loneliness, but without sentimentality. She can be acid or funny or both, and her eye is satirical but also compassionate. She can be comic and heartbreaking at the same time: for example, try the late stories "Flesh" and "The Blossoming".
Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: one of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth - Sarah Waters
Elizabeth Taylor, highly acclaimed author of classic novels such as Angel, A Game of Hide and Seek and Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, is also renowned for her powerful, acutely observed stories. Here for the first time, the stories - including some only recently rediscovered - are collected in one volume. From the awkward passions of lonely holiday-makers to the anticipation of three school friends preparing for their first dance, from the minor jealousies and triumphs of…
The writings of the Greeks and Romans form the bedrock of Western culture. Inventing the molds for histories, tragedies, and philosophies, while pioneering radical new forms of epic and poetry, the Greeks and Romans created the literary world we still inhabit today. Writing with verve and insight, distinguished classicist Richard Jenkyns explores a thousand years of classical civilization, carrying readers from the depths of the Greek dark ages through the glittering heights of Rome's empire.
A dynamic and comprehensive introduction to Greek and Roman literature, Jenkyns's Classical Literature is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the classics – and the extraordinary origins of Western culture.
