The first books I read about the mystery-solving medieval monk were a bumper edition of the first three: “A Morbid Taste for Bones”, “One Corpse Too MThe first books I read about the mystery-solving medieval monk were a bumper edition of the first three: “A Morbid Taste for Bones”, “One Corpse Too Many” and this one Monk’s Hood. There are twenty books by Ellis Peters (a pseudonym for Edith Pargeter) about Brother Cadfael, as well as a few later ones about her invented character by other authors. They are collected together in various ways; this is not the edition I read.
Several of these novels have also been dramatised for television, with Derek Jacobi in the lead role and a good supporting cast. The dramatisation here though is the first part of a series of 3 radio dramas on one DAISY disc: Brother Cadfael: A BBC Radio Collection of Three Full-Cast Dramatisations.
Philip Madoc stars as Cadfael, who used to be a Crusader in the Holy Wars, and also a sailor, but is now a Benedictine monk at the monastery in Shrewsbury. He has skill as their herbalist, and spends his days ministering to his brothers using the medical skills he acquired in the Holy Lands. With his knowledge of the world and wide experience of human nature however, he often finds himself called upon when there is a murder to solve.
All the books are historically accurate and set between about 1135 and about 1145, during “The Anarchy”. This was a destructive contest for the crown between King Stephen and Empress Maud.
In Monk’s Hood the year is 1138. Brother Cadfael is asked to supply a healing potion for a sick monk—but the monk’s hood oil he uses could kill as well as cure. (view spoiler)[Gervase Bonel, a local landowner is poisoned, and suspicion falls on a young lad who happens to be the son of Cadfael’s old sweetheart from years earlier. Since the victim had recently changed his will to benefit the monastery, instead of this stepson, many people are interested in the outcome. (hide spoiler)]
The rich, sonorous timbre of Philip Madoc’s voice is perfect for Brother Cadfael, the stolid but compassionate Welsh monk who used to be a soldier. Other stand-out characters in this story were Prior Robert (Geoffrey Whitehead), the monk who has an eye to becoming the Abbot; Hugh Beringar (Alan Barker), a sympathetic local deputy sheriff; Brother Mark (Ian Targett), a young monk who is Cadfael's bold, sometimes cheeky apprentice; Aelfric (Mark Straker) Edwy Bellecote (Stephen Garlick) and Edwin Gurney (Richard Pearce), three youths on whom suspicion falls at various points; and Richildis Bonel (Pat Heywood), the woman to whom Cadfael was once betrothed.
Michael Hordern’s intermittent narration is also excellent. The adaptation was made in 1991 by Bert Coules, one of the BBC’s best writers in my opinion. He has managed to include a perfect balance of plot and description, so that we get a real sense of medieval Shrewsbury and the Welsh borders. The theme tune is played on contemporary instruments. The entire production lasts for 2 and a half hours (5 episodes). It is recommended.
Also on this disc are dramatisations of “The Virgin in the Ice” and “Dead Man’s Ransom”....more
“The sun is up, the skies are blue, and murder is in the air.”
To be honest, I didn’t expect to enjoy The Thursday Murder Club as much as I did. A debu“The sun is up, the skies are blue, and murder is in the air.”
To be honest, I didn’t expect to enjoy The Thursday Murder Club as much as I did. A debut novel by a TV personality was not necessarily going to be my cup of tea, I thought. But over the last few months two of my groups had picked it as a group read, and since one only ever reads English mysteries, I knew they would soon throw out a turkey.
I have not watched any of the quiz programmes Richard Osman has created, nor the panel shows he is in, but he seems ubiquitous on current popular British TV, so I have inadvertently caught a few moments here and there. He always seems relaxed, knowledgeable and very erudite. Apparently he studied Politics and Sociology at Trinity College, Cambridge, but loves popular culture. Light-hearted quiz shows and comedy seem to be his natural element, and one in which he is adept.
Having said that, Richard Osman is not the sort of smooth compere you might expect when switching on a glitzy new TV show. I trust he would not mind me saying that he is no oil painting! Over six feet tall, with the stereotypical look of a “brain-box”, he not surprisingly began his TV life in the back office, working exclusively in behind-the-camera roles. Nowadays he is not only involved in research, but also creates quiz programmes with new formats such as “Pointless” and “Richard Osman’s House of Games”, as well as co-presenting and working as an executive producer.
Like many people Richard Osman thought there might be a book in him, and decided to write the sort of book he most enjoyed reading himself; a traditional murder mystery. It took him a while before he hit on a good theme, but when he visited an upmarket retirement village, he could see the potential immediately. He invented his own retirement village, set near the fictitious village of Fairhaven in Kent, and called it “Cooper’s Chase”. Modelled on the one he had visited, it boasts a full range of recreational and medical facilities including what one of the residents calls a “contemporary upscale restaurant”. This is said with tongue firmly in cheek of course; a droll, typically English observation.
Richard Osman did not tell anyone about his novel, and spent 18 months writing and rewriting drafts, honing the characters which popped into his mind … and still he was not sure. The Irish author Marian Keyes encouraged him at quite an early stage. (This recording is narrated expertly by Lesley Manville, and also includes an interview with Marian Keyes, at his request.)
From that interview we hear that Richard Osman found the generation which are now entering retirement homes like these uniquely interesting. Because ordinary working and lower middle class people from their late sixties to early eighties were the first generation to have the opportunity of further education, to travel, and have a variety of occupations, he maintains there is an independence of thought and free spirit which those before and after often do not have. They may not use the current buzz words and vocabulary, but when something is explained, this elderly generation have no difficulty in thinking outside the box. Nor do they care what anyone thinks; a privilege of the elderly worldwide. This all makes for four irresistible and entertaining members of the Thursday murder club.
“After a certain age, you can pretty much do whatever takes your fancy. No one tells you off, except for your doctors and your children.”
Richard Osman found himself harking back to the golden age of mysteries, with no explicit violence and no swearing. Yet the language he uses is contemporary and idiomatic. We get phrases such as “that’s me” or “the long and short of it”; phrases which have no meaningful translation, but which pepper the English language. There are also many references to popular culture, and a lot of English idiosyncrasies, such as Joyce liking to bake cakes:
“It was a well-known fact that there were no calories in homemade cakes”
and chatting about which shop you would buy them from if you absolutely had to have a shop-made one. (Joyce and Richard Osman thinks it is Marks and Spencer’s. This is probably close to the author’s heart, as he has reported having an eating disorder, which he has to control very carefully.) Oddly, this banal sort of detail never seems to pall, because the writing is so lucid and witty.
One resident sums up Coopers Chase:
“You can’t move here until you’re over sixty-five and the Waitrose delivery vans clink with wine and repeat prescriptions every time they pass over the cattle grid.”
It stands on the site of a former convent, with the graveyard still attached, and has beautiful views over the Kentish weald. But an unwelcome developer is hovering, a brash and vulgar man whom they all dislike (he even owns a red grand piano!) And he is determined to find a legal loophole to allow him to turn the chapel and graveyard into eight new flats.
So what is the “Thursday Murder Club”? It is a group of residents, not friends, they would stress, who set out to solve cases they come across, rather than joining in with the latest knitting club, or jigsaws in the lounge. Thursdays is a day when they can all meet, “between Art History and Conversational French” thus without being interrupted by one of the other activities. They decide to investigate unsolved murder cases where (they would say) the Kent police force have been too hopeless to make any prosecutions.
Each of these residents is very different, with different backgrounds and from different classes. We do not always know their pasts, and in one case at least - perhaps two - they are rather murky. They are direct, as elderly people usually are. Having no reason not to be, they “speak as they find”. But the skills they have, and the contacts they still know, often prove uniquely helpful.
These amateur sleuths set about solving the mystery of a murder which is of interest to each and every resident. As they might say, it was “a bit too close to home”. In fact the plot becomes rather complicated with two or more possible extra murders involved. Perhaps they are related, perhaps not. Perhaps they are recent, or historical, but we know that each will somehow have a personal connection with one of the quartet.
We also have a diverse selection of secondary characters such as Donna De Freitas, a police constable who is regretting moving from the city, and feeling undervalued. Then there is her boss, who is frustrated with his life for other reasons. The Thursday Murder Club members run rings round these two, yet because of the skill of the writing, we feel empathy for each and every one of them. There is a local priest, and friends and relatives, both local and far-flung, all of whom have a part to play. One has a son who is a boxer, another a high-flying business-woman, and various spouses alive, deceased, senile or comatose are depicted realistically but with grace and humour.
Surprised by the success of this debut novel in 2020, Richard Osman realised that there was potential for a series of The Thursday Murder Club Mysteries. To date there are four in the series, with a fifth book planned for release in 2025. There is also an upcoming film of The Thursday Murder Club in production starring Helen Mirren as Elizabeth Best. Elizabeth intrigued me. She is clearly widely travelled and yet her past is a mystery. I picked up hints that she might have been (view spoiler)[ a spy (hide spoiler)]. It was always Elizabeth who got things moving. She was described as “the sort of teacher who terrifies you all year then gets you a grade A and cries when you leave”.
A surprise casting is Pierce Brosnan as the opinionated and militant ex-Trade Union leader Ron Ritchie, a fervent admirer of “Red Ken” (a former London Mayor) and who has a West Ham tattoo on his neck. Ben Kingsley is cast as Ibrahim Arif, the meticulous Egyptian psychiatrist, who has an eye for detail. The ethnicity is not right here of course … Sir Ben Kingsley was born to an English mother and an Indian Gujarati father. His real name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji. However, Ben Kingsley has shown he can act across various cultures.
Everyone’s favourite character, Joyce Meadowcroft, the former nurse, is yet to be cast. Joyce is quietly spoken and with a pleasant demeanour; often to be seen dressed in a lavender blouse and mauve cardigan. She too has hidden depths, as we learn as we read. The novel alternates between an omniscient narrator, and Joyce’s diary. One could say (in the idiom of the novel) that Joyce is “not as green as she is cabbage looking”. She notices a great deal, without appearing to, and is not as naive as she seems.
Richard Osman said in the interview that whenever he wasn’t sure how to proceed, he would think to himself, “What would Joyce do?” And if he wondered how she would react to something, or what she would say, he would think of his mother. He talks quite a lot about his mother, who had struggled to brought her two sons up single-handedly after their father left. (His older brother is Mat Osman, bass guitarist with the rock band “Suede”). She then went to teacher training college. Richard Osman clearly admires her tenacity, and puts quite a lot of his mother and the people he knows in the book.
Will I read more of these novels? Yes, probably. This first one is a step up from most cosy mysteries, and has a very lively style, although it is perhaps not quite a four star novel. It is just too complicated, with too many twist and turns. At the moment Richard Osman is writing a novel every year, and each has been very popular. The Thursday Murder Club sold 45,000 copies in its first three days on sale and became a Sunday Times number one bestseller. It was the first debut novel ever to be Christmas number one.
I probably still won’t watch Richard Osman’s TV quiz programmes. But I do find him a personable and engaging sort of chap, and admire his struggle against various difficulties. His early life was difficult and he has to cope with the eye condition nystagmus, which reduces his vision so that he cannot read an autocue and has to learns his scripts by heart. The interview he gave was interesting, but I did find Marian Keyes far too gushing! Each was full of so much flattery and mutual praise for the other that at one point Richard Osman said, can we make a bargain? Can we agree now that we will never mention this again? Somehow I feel he was probably as embarrassed by it all, as his listeners will be. So I don’t recommend listening to that, unless you enjoy Hollywood type self-congratulation. But I will definitely watch the film when it comes out, with its gently ironic characters.
“Many years ago, everybody here would wake early because there was much to do and only so many hours in the day. Now they wake early because there is much to do and only so many days left.”
“... because you know that getting out of a garden chair at our age is a military operation. Once you are in one, you can be in it for the day.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know WTF. I only discovered LOL from Joyce last week.”
On then to “The Man Who Died Twice” from 2021....more
Have you ever take a citizenship test for the country where you live?
Perhaps not. The largest group of people in any country are usually the ones who Have you ever take a citizenship test for the country where you live?
Perhaps not. The largest group of people in any country are usually the ones who were born there. Even in our multicultural UK, only 14.8% were not born here, although the rules for legal citizenship are quite complicated, firstly because of the British Empire, and then the history of the Commonwealth. Nationality legislation began far earlier than we think; there was even an Act of Parliament in 1772 about British subject status. Mostly though what is relevant today dates back to the British Nationality Act of 1948. By this Act, everyone living in a Commonwealth country, including the UK and the Colonies was deemed a British subject. Between 1948 and 1971 (the “Windrush” generation) anyone from the Caribbean was invited to come and live in Britain.
However the Immigration Act of 1971 changed everything, virtually rewriting British immigration law, and introducing the concept of the right of abode. Over the years the good will shown by British citizens to incoming migrants has been chipped away by successively stringent Parliamentary Acts, so labyrinthine in places that guides on how to access the relevant points have to be produced to make sense of them, and plagued with ridiculous bits of bureaucratic paperwork such as the biometric residence permit. It would take several volumes to summarise all the changes since 1971, (and you would almost certainly have fallen asleep before we even got to this century).
So what relevance does this have to the book in question? Well, The Test is about an English resident, Idir Jalil, a dentist who originally emigrated from Iran. He has arrived at a surprisingly swish government centre to take a UK citizenship test. This will either grant his entire family permission to stay in London, or get them deported. This novel surely has to be written by a UK citizen, yes? Perhaps to highlight the various controversial topics which are currently dominating UK News; the divisions between politicians themselves, and opposing factions of the public who are also at each other’s throats. A common area of dispute is the migrants who arrive (or drown in the attempt) as asylum seekers, in small boats having crossed the English Channel. They are fleeing persecution in their birth country, but are all too likely to end up in an insanitary disease-ridden holding centre, or crammed into an offshore barge, where crime has become rife.
What has happened to the traditional British welcome to refugees; the compassionate, caring attitude British people were famed for? When did xenophobia rise its ugly head? Who knows. It’s highly topical, and politicians of all persuasions try to convince the public that we still are a caring nation … Is The Test perhaps a book by someone living in the UK, which tears that myth to shreds?
Well no, it’s not. But neither is it a glossy manifesto proclaiming how magnificent the UK system is, or propaganda of the hectoring “Make the UK Great Again” ilk, thankfully. It’s actually a novel by a Canadian!
A Canadian? Wait a minute … don’t they have their own citizens?
Yes, they do. But as members of the British Empire, Canadians were considered British subjects until 1947. Canada was one of the principal creators of the Commonwealth in the 1930s, and the British monarchy is still part of the Canadian political system. Canada still has a special relationship with the UK, so a Canadian’s view of a fictionalised British citizenship test would be pertinent.
Fictionalised? Yes. In the UK there is such a test, called the “Life in the UK Test”. It costs £50, and has to be taken at one of 30-odd centres in the UK before an application for British citizenship is completed. Of course various other documents also have to be submitted, and the applicant has to swot up on the “Official Handbook for the Life in the UK Test”. The applicant has 45 minutes, in which to answer 24 multiple-choice questions about British traditions and customs.
So here we are with Idir, in a Britain of the not-too-distant future. He is admitted to the assessment room, and we see that his behaviour and demeanour are careful and polite, despite those around him. He seems a model citizen. But what is a “model citizen”? Back to the real life UK today …
British values of national identity go by several names. They are sometimes referred to as Fundamental British Values or Core British Values. They include respect for the rule of law, individual liberty, democracy, and mutual respect for and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. All well and good. All good citizens should uphold these values. Is this then what Idir will be tested on?
Not only us, but Idir’s wife and two children are anxiously watching (through a window) as Idir takes the test. His test has 25 often seemingly ludicrous questions. We hear Idir’s thoughts as he nervously tries to concentrate, and we learn some of his history.
“The Battle of Bosworth Field was fought in … 1485. I am positive. That is the answer. I wonder who writes these questions. How will knowing this make me a better member of British society? My son has no memory of Iran and my daughter was born here. We have been asked many times why we hate freedom, told to go back to the desert many times … but not once has anyone asked me about famous battles of the fifteenth century.”
We learn that Idir’s wife Tidir is a journalist, who has faced intolerable situations, and would probably handle stress better than he could (view spoiler)[. Tidir had regularly been detained and tortured by the Islamic Republic’s National Guard. (hide spoiler)] And we wonder ourselves as Idir does, what relevance some of these questions have to being a good citizen in Britain today. “In which year did Richard III die?” Other questions are designed to test appropriate behaviour and mores, so as we all would, Idir sets about wondering what the test wants him to say, rather than what his first reaction might be.
All seems to be going well (except that I am getting nervous about my own knowledge of British history - and sport culture) when Something Happens.
At this point I am thoroughly engaged with the characters, and something happens in my world too. I had reached the end of my (kindle) sample, and could not easily access a device to buy or borrow it. So I called to someone in the house whom I knew to be on their computer, and asked them to download it for me “right now!” so I could continue. I’ve never done that before (though I have been known to accidentally go past my stop on the tube), so yes, I can say that it is definitely gripping; a real page-turner. It is full of action and heart - and quite short - although I did restrain myself from finishing it then and there.
I can’t really say much more without seriously spoiling the story. For myself I began it without even reading the blurb, although the situation and context was clear from the start. The “British Values Assessment” (BVA) citizenship test had been implemented six months after “the bombs went off”, and was designed in part to weed out any so-called extremism. We might expect any such test to be based on sound psychology, and here we are presented with some novel ideas:
“System justification is the idea that many of our needs can be satisfied by defending and justifying the status quo. It gives stability to our political and economic systems because people are inherently inclined to defend it. It prevents people at a disadvantage from questioning the system that disadvantages them, makes people buy the inevitability of social inequity, ignore or support policies that hurt them.”
Interestingly, the only friends I know to have read this are not normally, or ever, resident in the UK. Neither is it available in any of my libraries, despite having been published over 3 years ago ...
Is it predictable? Not for me, and certainly not the ending. There are plenty of conundrums here, in a kind of philosophical dystopia. Do we have the right to choose? Do we have the right not to choose?
But in all bureaucratic systems, the rule book is law. This novella from 2019 is a thought-provoking and chilling vision of our near future in Britain; a timely and disturbing cautionary tale....more
The Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit is a large format book which contains all 4 stories by Beatrix Potter, which feature Peter Rabbit.
They are “ThThe Complete Adventures of Peter Rabbit is a large format book which contains all 4 stories by Beatrix Potter, which feature Peter Rabbit.
They are “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”, “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny”, “The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies”, and “The Tale of Mr Tod”.
The original watercolour illustrations from Beatrix Potter’s tiny books are used, but before her stories were ever taken on by a large publisher (Frederick Warne), the author had the Peter Rabbit stories printed privately. This large format volume also includes some of these black and white pen drawings, which is a rare treat.
We can follow the whole family history of Peter Rabbit through these 4 stories. After his adventures in Mr. McGregor’s Garden in the first ever book, Peter grows up to be a respectable vegetable gardener himself! He sometimes helps out his more feckless relations, and now and then gives the odd cabbage to his sister Flopsy (who has married his cousin Benjamin Bunny). We also learn what befalls some of their offspring.
The Flopsy Bunnies unwittingly eat too many lettuces and suffer from the soporific effects, thereby falling straight into the hands of Mr McGregor. The fourth story is twice as long as any of the three preceding ones. In it, Tommy Brock the badger tricks Mr. Tod the fox, and kidnaps another litter of flopsy bunnies, because of the carelessness of their grandfather Old Benjamin Bouncer.
We also discover that Cotton-tail has married the little black rabbit who was sweet on her in a different book. But of the 3 rabbits who were Peter’s sisters, nobody every mentions Mopsy, and we do begin to wonder about Mr McGregor’s fondness for rabbit pie …
The Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl is a novella which was originally published in “Galaxy” magazine in April, 1954. It was later to be dramatised for tThe Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl is a novella which was originally published in “Galaxy” magazine in April, 1954. It was later to be dramatised for television by the BBC, for the first series of “Out of the Unknown” in 1965.
The story began as an idea by “Galaxy”’s editor, Horace Gold. He mentioned a brainwave he'd had for a story, to several of his regular contributors. It was to be a satire on consumerism, i.e. the richer you were, the less you were forced to consume. Thus the greatest poverty was allied to the aggregation of goods. It seemed a crazy idea.
Frederik Pohl was becoming known in the 1950s for writing satirical stories based on the emergence of a consumer society. The previous year, 1952, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth had co-authored a novel which was originally published as a serial in “Galaxy” magazine. This was “The Space Merchants”, which was also a social satire about consumers in a capitalist society, (in that case marketing Venus as real estate). However this idea of his editor seemed so absurd, that nobody took Horace Gold up on it, until (according to Frederik Pohl), he was more or less bullied into making an attempt at it. He decided that it was easier to write something on the theme of over-production suggested, rather than to keep resisting his editor’s pressure. To his amazement, the story proved very popular and is often included in Sci-Fi anthologies (including “Spectrum 1”).
In 1954, it was possible to imagine a world where energy was cheap, and robots were overproducing the commodities enjoyed by humans. It’s then a small stretch to accept the idea of the lower-class “poor”, spending their lives frantically consuming as much as possible in order to keep up with their extravagant supply of goods, while the upper-class “rich” enjoy the simple life. Theft as a crime is nonexistent, and the government Ration Board enforce the use of ration stamps, to ensure that everyone consumes their quotas. Everyone’s aim is to move through the system attaining a higher number, so that they are issued with fewer ration stamps and have to consume less. The lower classes are only able to work one day a week, because every waking hour is dedicated to consuming.
The protagonist is Morey Fry, who marries Cherry, a young woman from a higher-class family. But it is said that “poor people should not marry wealth”. Raised in a home with only five rooms Cherry cannot get used to a life of forced consumption in their huge mansion of 26 rooms, nine automobiles, and five robots, and things quickly become strained, as the couple argue.
“You never wasted things. You used them. If necessary you drove yourself to the edge of breakdown to use them; you made every breath a burden and every hour a torment to use them, until through diligent consuming and/or occupational merit, you were promoted to the next higher class, and were allowed to consume less frantically. But you didn’t wantonly destroy or throw out. You consumed.”
Then Morey has a brilliant idea. (view spoiler)[He uses robots to fulfil his quota of ration stamps. Because he trained as an engineer, he is able to modify his robots to actually enjoy helping to consume his allowance. When his idea is discovered, Morey fears punishment. However the Ration Board had been looking for a way to abolish itself, and rewards Morey with a responsible new job and higher grade, helping to implement his idea across the world. (hide spoiler)]
When reading Sci-Fi from the 1950s, we have to make allowances for the time. Most will reflect the current social mores, and transfer them to an imagined future. Females in particular have little presence in these stories, except as adjuncts to the main, male, characters. Cherry, one of the few females, conforms to the stereotypical 1950s housewife, and none of the others mentioned in this fantasy future seem have a life other than domesticity. In a way this unintentionally adds to the satirical element. Another common myth was the assumption that in the near distant future, humanised robots would be there to serve our every need. In The Midas Plague we have a third whopping discrepancy with reality; that the world’s resources were assumed to be unlimited, and there for the taking. Yes we have massive consumerism, as anticipated, but the cost is high.
If we ignore these aspects, then the idea of “less is more” is a nice twist on consumerism. However it proved difficult to sustain in the playing out of the story. Bearing in mind that everything is switched to the opposite becomes a little tedious, and strays from believable reality.
“It wasn’t so hard to be a proper, industrious consumer if you worked at it, he reflected. It was only the malcontents, the ne’er-do-wells and the incompetents who simply could not adjust to the world around them.”
This seems to imply we are getting into political theory. But would rational beings really accept this system, where they are forced to wear themselves out consuming? Wouldn’t they decide it was idiotic? It's more like a farce than a biting satire, with the intentionally absurd ending detracting from the thrust of the story. Also, the story itself is overlong; this novella only just makes 3 stars, as it rambled too much. If Frederik Pohl had tightened it up he could have written a sharp short story.
The idea of consumer-obsessed society was to be used again by Frederik Pohl in 1960 for the novelette “The Man Who Ate The World” which is apparently stronger and more credible, but is not as well-known....more
Although described as a “handbook”, The Oxford Companion to Art is a huge encyclopaedic volume for anyone who wants an accessible introduction and worAlthough described as a “handbook”, The Oxford Companion to Art is a huge encyclopaedic volume for anyone who wants an accessible introduction and work of reference to the Fine Arts. It has over a thousand pages of small type, with around 3,000 entries. They vary from brief descriptions to longer articles which guide the reader through both national and regional schools of art, styles, techniques, and iconography. Plus there are short biographies of painters, sculptors, and architects.
This edition was published in 1970, (although this impression is from 1975). Hence its aim to cover “human artistic endeavour through all time and throughout the world” is applicable only until that date. Many single artists and movements post-date the publication, and it is helpful to supplement the hefty volume with the “Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art”. It is also worth noting that in order to bring so vast a body of material within the range of a single volume the editor has excluded all illustration or decorative work. None of the the practical arts and handicrafts are covered, with the exception of some entries on architecture and ceramics. Unfortunately this mean that the book feels culturally biased, since the artistic development of many countries and peoples is not covered.
The gender bias is also quite shocking. I looked in vain for some of my favourite artists. Neither of the Surrealists Leonora Carrington (English although working in Mexico, working between 1936 and 2011, and prominent in the 1970s) or Remedios Varo (Catalan, working between 1924 and 1963) are there, and the immensely popular Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is not even mentioned, although there is an entry for her (now less famous) husband Diego Rivera. Fahrelnissa Zaid was a prominent Turkish avant-garde artist in the 1940s, and was still working in 1991. The Russian artist Natalia Goncherova’s dates are 1881-1962. Until then I had allowed for the fact that these female artists came more to prominence in the 21st century, despite their dates, but Artemisia Gentileschi was well-known at the time. She was a famous Italian Baroque painter; her dates are 1593-1696. Artemisia does get a mention—but only within the entry for her far less famous (or revered) father. Orazio Gentileschi. Sadly the conclusion has to be that this encyclopaediac work ignores most, if not all, female artists, despite the fact that this representative handful have all had major exhibitions of their works, worldwide.
The articles are written by specialists in the field, with Harold Osborne choosing the selection of topics and editing the details of each one. There are cross-references to help the reader to supplement the information given in any one article, plus a large bibliography. It is illustrated but minimally, and in black and white. For a book on Fine Art this seems extraordinary, and later editions such as one from 1995 still contain black and white photographs and drawings, with just a few colour plates.
When it was published this was the best general reference book on the Fine Arts there was, but now the internet has replaced the need for such a book for many of us. It is useful for checking wiki articles, but I tend to agree with a single line review on Amazon which speaks volumes: “a huge book I will never need”....more
Bionic Jean
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