Andrew Taylor
Death Became Him
Over The Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe
By Laurence Bergreen
HarperCollins 456pp £25 order from our bookshop
MY ONLY GRUMBLE about Over the Edge of the World is the title, with its superior, twenty-first-century nod towards the image of a boatload of wide-eyed innocents sailing terror-stricken towards expected destruction as they tumble off the flat world and into the void. That is a modern myth: it had been well known since at least the time of Pythagoras of Samos in the sixth century BC that the earth was a globe.
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'Fiona Shaw, in Jonathan Miller’s production, is the best shrew I have seen. She starts off in a mustard yellow dress with a mustard sharp tongue.'
From the archive, Kate Kellaway on a 1988 production of 'The Taming of the Shrew'.
http://ow.ly/TWfX50y2Udw
'He was not a revolutionary at all of course. He was only marginally a socialist. His tradition was rooted in the Liberal aristocracy, and his politics were entirely bounded by Parliament.'
From the archive, Paul Foot on Tony Benn's diaries.
http://ow.ly/3VBf50y0Ebe
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