UK JULY 2011 - CASTLE HOWARD AND LACOCK

This is the last installment of my UK JULY 2011 series.  I promised you I'd  tell about our location hunting activities and here I am with this final post about Castle Howard and Lacock. 

Two different adaptations of Evelyn Waughn's Brideshead Revisited were set at Castle Howard and being there, well nearby, we couldn't resist the idea of a trip to this gorgeous, luxurious residence and its magnificent park, groves and lakes .

We were extremely lucky and had  fine weather, warm and sunny, that day. It was so good that we could have a quick snack on the meadows  -  we also had several  uninvited guests at our picnic - and could admire the lake,  sitting on a terrace while drinking cappuccino -yes,  you're right not  a very British drink .

SALT BRIDE - A GEORGIAN ROMANCE BY LUCINDA BRANT, REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

If you love good Georgian historical romances, you can’t miss this delightful novel by Lucinda Brant. Witty prose and well-researched context, skillfully drawn characters you’ll be captivated by, are the main features in her style . Salt Bride is my second read from Lucinda’s work  - after Deadly Engagement - and I must thank her for hours of pure literary pleasure.

The story starts in medias res, and impressively so. The first pages are really tense with drama and you  can't but sympathize with the heroine, Jane Despard , since the opening : 

RA COMIC CARDS

My husband didn't imagine what was going to happen  when,  as a joke,  he made a comic-strip (above)  with pictures of Heinz Kruger from Captain America using his IPhone and sent it to me via mail. Poor him!  I started sending him pictures of other roles Richard Armitage played and asking him to make others. I chose the photos, wrote the captions  and ... you can't imagine what a pain in the neck I have been.  Or better, maybe, some of you can! 

Well, he and his iPhone helped me to create these comic cards dedicated to some of RA's characters. I've posted them on facebook and twitter from time to time, so you might have already seen them. Today I've decided to put them  all together in one post , here on Fly High, adding  a brand-new one at the end. Discover which of RA's characters it is dedicated to. I hope you'll like them all and, remember, they are just for fun.

THE WEDDING SHROUD BY ELISABETH STORRS - REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

It got me hooked from the first words in the Prologue -  "Her whole world was orange" - and I couldn't put it down for a while. THE WEDDING SHROUD is a surprising page-turner , about-500-page- thick, dense with tension, emotion and sensuousness, crowded with unforgettable vivid characters: Cecilia, Mastarna, Tarchon, Marcus, Drusus, Larthia, Ulthes, Erene, Artile, Arruns, Cytheris, Tulumnes, and even dead Seianta. Elisabeth Storrs combines detailed research and remarkably talented writing in her portrayal of life in Early Rome. Her heroine, Cecilia, is a complex character,  presented in all the frailty of an unloved child grown-up into a torn young woman. It is not easy for her to love, trust or rely on others, especially once she gets to an enemy city and culture. Prejudiced, stubborn, frightened and divided between her loyalty to Rome and her duty as a Veientane wife, her mind keeps her tied to Roman values and morality, while her heart and her senses wish and escape and are fascinated by the freedom and beauty she finds in Veii. 

AT THE CINEMA - THE CONSPIRATOR

Italian poster

It was released in the USA in 2010 and after reading about  it, I ticked this film  as definitely to be seen. Directed by Robert Redford, starring James MacAvoy, Robin Wright, Kevin Kline, Tom Wilkinson, THE CONSPIRATOR has just been released in Italy and I couldn't miss it. It's a remarkable, sharp, dry account of the facts following a shocking event in the history of the US . It's also a movie denouncing a vision of justice stained by revenge in moments of fear. It's impossible not to read the political  aim in  Redford's choices, but it is also unavoidable to admire the beautiful photography of his work and his masterly and highly symbolical use of light all over the movie. There have been other tragic shocking moments in recent history for the Americans, when the democratic ideal of a fair trial was suspended and frozen, and I'm sure they are constant reference to Redford while narrating these history-handbook events in this awesome 19th century period postcard. It's the story of Mary Surratt (Robin Wright) , sentenced to death for conspiration against President Abraham Lincoln, and  Frederick Aiken (James MacAvoy) , the young lawyer who tried to demonstrate her innocence.

COMING SOON - DANGEROUS KEIRA IN A DANGEROUS METHOD

Based on a play by  Christopher Hampton, this film tells how the still experimental psychoanalytic method was developed focusing on the peculiar relationship between Sigmund Freud, and his beloved pupil  (then antagonist) Carl Gustav Jung and their Russian patient Sabina Spielrein, loved and sought after by both. Sabina Spielrein will later on go back to her native country spreading the knowledge of psychoanalysis . As a Jew, she will be caught and killed by the Germans.  Sabina's story had already been told in another beautiful Italian film directed by Roberto Faenza Prendimi l’anima and also inspired a remarkable thriller  ,  The White Hotel (1981) written by Donald M. Thomas. 

M THE MAN WHO BECAME CARAVAGGIO BY PETER ROBB - BOOK REVIEW

I read an Italian translation of this biography by Australian author Peter Robb, "M L'Enigma Caravaggio", which I bought in Rome in one of my recent errands with friends around the capital. Honestly,  I thought it was a fictionalized biography, instead, it is a biographical work based on a thourough research and a great deal of documents. I've always been attracted by the dark, violent, realistic paintings of the man called Caravaggio from the name of the town he was brought up in. What make them so special is how the light breaks into the darkness often revealing shocking realistic portraits of human sufferings, pains, sorrow and violence. 

The entire existence of Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, is still today a highly fascinating enigma. Thanks to his sensitiveness  and to his accurate researches based on first-hand documents, Peter Robb brings back to life both the man and the artist in the 527 pages of this book, and he does that  with great, powerful tragicality. He dares  word his own hypothesis on the inexplicable facts in Michelangelo Merisi's life, such as his final disappearance. Nobody knows where, when and, especially, how he died.

PERIOD MOVIES RECENTLY WATCHED

Watching period drama or costume movies is one of my favourite pastimes and being on holiday helps a lot! I've recenlty watched several films, these are just three of them, all of them set  around the years of WWII: BBC 2 The Night Watch (2011) , Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) and Within the Wirlwind (2009). 

The Night Watch  - I was in England when it was on BBC2 on 12 July and could see it while in Nottingham. My attention was caught by the first scenes showing Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House, North and South, South Riding) in men's clothes wandering about the crowded streets of London as haunted. So I decided to go on watching though I didn't know anything about it. 

 

"If you go to the cinema midway through a film, you watch the second half first, don't you?" Kay - the character Anna Maxwell Martin plays - says at the beginning. The Night Watch then also unfolds from back to front, beginning in 1947, then jumping back to 1944, then again to 1941( it is just the same device used by Sarah Waters in the novel (2006) this TV movie is an adaptation of ).

UK JULY 2011 - ABBEYS & CATHEDRALS WITH KINGSBRIDGE IN MIND

Cloister - Salisbury Cathedral

Here's another instalment of the travelogue of my recent tour in England. This is what I called "The Pillars Trail" .
They call it literary tourism - a type of cultural tourism that deals with places and events from fictional texts as well as the lives of their authors - and it seems it is precisely what we did  in that week in July. With Ken Follet's The Pillars Of  The Earth and its TV adaptation in mind  (have a look at my review of the book and at that of the series, if you want), it was such a stirring experience to visit impressive English cathedrals like York Minster, Salisbury or Winchester or their fascinating remains like at Fountains Abbey or Rievaulx.

Eddie Redmayne as Jack in The Pillars of the Earth

It was as if Tom the Builder's dream took shape under our astonished eyes and Jack's (his step-son), ambitions materialized in front of us. We could appreciate the efforts and pains to achieve such stunning achievements much deeply. It was a heart-felt journey into medieval history and architecture, but also into a book which we all had loved reading.

THESE OLD SHADES BY GEORGETTE HEYER - MY REVIEW

“Set in the Georgian period, about 20 years before the Regency, These Old Shades is considered to be the book that launched Heyer’s career. It features two of Heyer’s most memorable characters: Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon, and Leonie, whom he rescues from a life of ignomy and comes to love and marry”.

If you meet Satanas in a dark alley in the middle of the night and you are desperately seeking escape from a wretched life of  violence and harassment, maybe you’d be as happy as young Leòn at becoming his,  body and soul, bought for a diamond pin. Very happy to become his page and wear good clothes,  to follow him wherever his libertine life led him without complaining, without questioning.

Especially if Satanas is just a nickname for a rich, elegant, fascinating nobleman: Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon. And mainly if he appears to you like this:

“ He walked mincingly, for the red heels of his shoes were very high. A long purple cloak, rose-lined, hung from his shoulders and was allowed to fall carelessly back from his dress, revealing a full-skirted coat of purple satin, heavily laced with gold; a waistcoat of flowered silk; faultless small clothes; and a lavish sprinkling of jewels on his cravat and breast”.