Blogs > Cliopatria > Things Noted Here & There

Apr 26, 2010

Things Noted Here & There


by Cliopatria


Carnivalesque LXI, an ancient/medieval edition of the festival, is up at Gill Polack's Even in a little thing.

In light of his recent confession of sock puppetry, London's Sunday Times has a profile of"Orlando Figes". Rachel Polonsky's"How I rumbled the lying professor: The story behind the discredited don who rubbished rivals on Amazon...then left his own wife to take the blame," Daily Mail, 25 April, and Matthew Bell's"Phoney reviewer Figes has history of litigious quarrels," Independent, 25 April, are more revealing. Hat tip to Margaret Soltan at University Diaries.

Frances Wilson reviews Lucy Worsley's Courtiers: The Secret History of Kensington Palace for London's Sunday Times, 25 April.

Jan Marsh for the Independent, 23 April, Miranda Seymour for the Telegraph, 24 April, and Sarah Bakewell for London's Sunday Times, 25 April, review Chloë Schama's Wild Romance: The True Story of a Victorian Scandal.

Adam Lively reviews Oliver Hilmes's Cosima Wagner: The Lady of Bayreuth, trans. by Stewart Spencer, for London's Sunday Times, 25 April.

Max Hastings reviews Fergal Keane's Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima, 1944 for London's Sunday Times, 25 April.

Charles McGrath,"Muriel Spark: Playing God," NYT, 22 April, and Michael Gorra,"The Prime of Ms. Muriel Spark," Slate, 25 April, review Martin Stannard's Muriel Spark: The Biography. On Friday, the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodiedied in Florence, Italy, at 88.

Mike O'Connor reviews Kai Bird's Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 for the Washington Post, 25 April.

Finally, Ralph Luker,"Sit In My Chair," IHE, 4 December 2006, found endowed chairs and programs in American colleges and universities that perpetuated the memory of sleazy capitalists, racist demagogues, and other assorted creeps and deviants. At the time, I forgot to mention Bard College's Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies. Joel Kovel held it for 20 years, until he was forced out last year for his anti-Zionism. Currently, Jonathan Brent is Alger Hiss visiting professor of history and literature at the College. Add to the list of unfortunately named chairs Harvard's Lloyd Blankfein Chair of History, currently held by David Armitage. His academic cushion honors the Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Hat tip.


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Jonathan Jarrett - 4/26/2010

I was lectured by Professor Figes as an undergraduate, before he had his current gig. What I mainly remember is that no-one occupied the first four rows of the fairly large room he was given to lecture in, because he spoke so uncomfortably loudly that if one did one's head was rattling by the end of the fifty minutes. There was a sort of cluster of shell-shocked listeners straggling forward from the very rear of the room. On the other hand, no-one fell asleep! And, he did pay a lot more attention to the plight of the peasantry than did some of the required reading, which annoyed me then but would attract me now. All the same, this episode is being strange to watch.