Blogs > Cliopatria > Things Noted Here & There

Jan 26, 2011

Things Noted Here & There


by Cliopatria


Carnivalesque LXX, an early modern edition of the festival, is up at Airs, Waters, Places.

Michael Dirda,"Exploring the elusive life of a poet and politician," Washington Post, 20 January, and Robert Polito,"Marvell Unmasked," bookforum, Feb/Mar, review Nigel Smith's Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon.

Steve Donoghue,"A Potent Brew," The National, 21 January, reviews Benjamin L. Carp's Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party & The Making of America.

You recall the moment when Jefferson Davis played host to Oscar Wilde, don't you? There are other unusual Historical Meet-Ups at the blog.

With 12 Oscar nominations,"The King's Speech" may be a fine motion picture, but it's bad history. See: Andrew Roberts,"The King Who Couldn't Speak," Daily Beast, 20 November; Cathy Schultz,"History in the Movies," bendbulletin.com, 4 January; Isaac Chotiner,"Royal Mess," TNR, 6 January; and Christopher Hitchens,"Churchill Didn't Say That," Slate, 24 January.

Thomas Meany,"Library Man," Nation, 7 February, reviews Patrick Wilckens's Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory.

Adam Kirsch,"Mugged by Reality," Tablet, 25 January, and Jacob Heilbrunn,"Keeper of the Faith," bookforum, Feb/Mar, review Irving Kristol's The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009.

Karan Mahajan,"The Don of Delhi," bookforum, Feb/Mar, sketches"India's authority on its Mughal past."

Thomas Nagel,"The Distinctions," NYRB, 10 February, reviews Tony Judt's The Memory Chalet.

Finally, farewell to Daniel Bell, a distinguished public intellectual. He outlived the author of his obituary.


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David Austin Walsh - 1/26/2011

For some reason, the thing that really made me cringe was when someone referred to "Marshal" Stalin in 1936. Distorted versions of Edward VIII and Churchill are one thing, but the titles should be right in a movie about royalty!

Alan Allport - 1/26/2011

As history, The King's Speech isn't great. But Chotiner and Hitchens do no better with their facile moral equivalency of appeasement with sympathy for fascism. There's a legitimate debate to be had about the theory and practice of appeasement: but not, it seems, with either of this pair.