People have been assigning meanings to country houses ever since Ben Jonson eulogised Penshurst Place, with its long lineage and its ancient pedigree, contrasting it favourably with the ostentatious power houses that were springing up all over Jacobean England: Now, Penshurst, they that will proportion thee With other edifices, when they see Those proud, ambitious heaps, […]
In the 1870s, the Manchester Corporation Waterworks made plans to buy two small Cumbrian lakes, Wythburn Water and Leathes Water, and the land surrounding them. They wanted to build a reservoir. The city desperately needed access to clean water for its burgeoning industrial population. But the
A bronze statue of a woman resting on a spade stares out across the Thames from the riverbank at Bermondsey towards the restless skyline of corporate London. ‘She looks determined and implacable,’ writes Niall Kishtainy. ‘Holding her spade, she is ready to build, not content with daydreams alone.’ The woman depicted is Ada Salter, the […]
The British are essentially townies and have been for generations. The movement into towns in mainland Britain was far in advance of that in any of our European neighbours and, indeed, in any other country in the world. More people were living in Britain’s towns in 1851 than in the countryside, a ratio not reached […]
This chunkily entertaining compendium of twenty-one stories could easily have been expanded into a sixty-volume encyclopedia, since all garden making is on one level a doomed act of folly and all garden makers therefore eccentrics. One of the strengths of this book is that Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, who is a well-respected garden historian and not a […]
Modern Londoners take for granted their ready access to clean water. Their medieval ancestors could obtain water from the Thames and its tributaries, not to mention springs and wells, but they also faced issues with pollution and droughts, and even risk to life and limb: Nick Higham notes that some poor souls drowned while drawing […]
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm