I've loved Robert Macfarlane's work, but this book has stayed with me. It's both lyrical and deeply unsettling, modern myth-making about a spit of land called Orford Ness. The first section, Ness, braids together voices from the land, from the Cold War era nuclear scientists who conducted tests there, with the overarching image of the Green Man. The second section, Holloway, looks at the ancient tracks by man and beast that have worn deep, deep "hollow ways" into the landscape of the British Isles. These are unquiet places, haunted places, a record of man's impact on the land even as the fungi and lichens and mosses work to reclaim their world. Spiky pen-and-ink drawings are evocative.
In Holloway, "a perfect miniature prose-poem" (William Dalrymple), Macfarlane, artist Stanley Donwood, and writer Dan Richards travel to Dorset, near the south coast of England, to explore a famed "hollowed way"-a path used by walkers and riders for so many centuries that it has become worn far down into the soft golden bedrock of the region.
In Ness, "a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age" (Max Porter), Macfarlane and Donwood create a modern myth about Orford Ness, the ten-mile-long shingle spit that lies off the coast of East Anglia, which the British government used for decades to…
I discovered this wonderful volume at a pop-up bookstore in Clarksburg, WV, where I was appearing with The Rustic Mechanicals, bringing my take on Macbeth to their touring show. This book by Hana Videen brings together linguistic scholarship with the lives of people in early medieval England, showing how words and phrases encapsulate the world-view. Spritely and well-written, a joy to keep by the bedside for dipping into.
An entertaining and illuminating collection of weird, wonderful, and downright baffling words from the origins of English-and what they reveal about the lives of the earliest English speakers
Old English is the language you think you know until you actually hear or see it. Unlike Shakespearean English or even Chaucer's Middle English, Old English-the language of Beowulf-defies comprehension by untrained modern readers. Used throughout much of Britain more than a thousand years ago, it is rich with words that haven't changed (like word), others that are unrecognizable (such as neorxnawang, or paradise), and some that are mystifying even in translation…
What an amazing book! I'd had it on my TBR list for a long time, but I kept myself from reading novels and especially anything medieval while I was getting The Last Highland King completed. This was a treat and a treasure after a lot of studying and writing. I knew Marie de France somewhat, as the writer of lais and courtly romances, but this evocation of the scholarly writer places her at the help of an English abbey that she remakes into a female utopia, protected from the outside world by a massive labyrinth. Wildly inventive, but also emotionally charged as Marie comes to terms with her own intellectual, sexual, and political nature.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS AN OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Gorgeous, sensual, addictive' SARA COLLINS 'Brightly lit' NAOMI ALDERMAN
Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court and sent to Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey.
Lauren Groff's modern masterpiece is about the establishment of a female utopia.
'A propulsive, captivating read' BRIT BENNETT 'Fascinating, beguiling, vivid' MARIAN KEYES 'A dazzlingly clever tale' THE TIMES 'A thrillingly vivid,…
Immersive and deeply evocative, Upon the Corner of the Moon offers a richly textured reimagining of the historical Macbeth and Gruach: children torn from their families, molded by forces beyond their control, and thrust into a perilous battle for power. Set at the dawn of the second millennium, the novel follows Macbeth as he navigates the treacherous court of his grandfather the High King, where loyalty is fleeting and blood ties are no guarantee of safety. Meanwhile, the girl who will become Lady Macbeth is raised among the remnants of the goddess-worshiping Picts and finds herself torn between two worlds: one rooted in ancient traditions and the other a patriarchy caught in relentless warfare. "As fate and ambition propel them forward, Nieman deftly intertwines prophecy, politics, and personal struggle, crafting a narrative that is as gripping as it is historically illuminating." -- Judith Turner-Yamamoto
