The earliest books I remember borrowing from the public library — over and over again — as a child were on astronomy and World War Two aircraft. I loved anything about the solar system, especially images from the early Viking landers that went to Mars, and the Voyager probes that ventured to the gas giants and beyond. And I probably knew more about World War Two fighters and bombers...
Jacob Mikanowski I’ve always found the history of Eastern Europe difficult to come to grips with compared to Western Europe. The history and culture of Spain, France and Italy seem to fall within clearly defined boundaries. We know what French or Italian food is, with all its regional variations, and we have a sense of French and Italian film or literature. Eastern Europe is different. Its...
My friend Lawrence Millman believes stories are essential to our survival. He’s spent his writing life tracking them down and preserving them, from East Greenland to the forgotten corners of the Canadian North. This obsession was present from his first book, Our Like Will Not Be There Again, in which he sets out to record the “wonder tales, jokes, violent opinions, and self-contained monologues”...
Barney White-Spunner (Photo by Millie Pilkington) Berlin has always been a uniquely nonconformist corner of a remarkably orderly country. It was the capital of Prussia, but its rulers preferred to live on its forested outskirts rather than in their palaces on the Spree. It came to symbolize Nazi Germany, but Hitler despised its rebellious, irreverent, freethinking residents. And for more than 40...
Joseph Roth Joseph Roth was one of the foremost European writers of the 20th century, and he wrote one of the period’s greatest novels. He wrote about the lost world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and of dispossessed people whose homeland was destroyed. His journalism captured fleeting moments with universal implications, and the social conflict, cultural upheaval, and acceleration of the inter...
Norman Lewis (Photo by David Montgomery/Getty Images) Norman Lewis was the 20th century’s most underrated writer about place. A man who took pride in his ability to fade into even the most exotic background, he wrote about cultures on the cusp of total and sometimes violent change. He had an instinct for being in exactly the right place to capture traditional ways of life on the brink of...
New Year’s Eve in Dublin The echo of words were in the air as we made our way to Dublin to tramp the streets of Ireland’s Big Smoke on the last three days of the year. Our hotel off Leeson Street Upper was a stone’s throw from the Grand Canal, and a quick cut across St. Stephen’s Green — or a detour past the rigid brick symmetry of Fitzwilliam Square’s Georgian facades — to the River Liffey...
Kilkenny Castle “It’s smaller than I thought.” That’s a phrase no one wants to hear, particularly men, but I was talking about the castle we’d driven across Co. Tipperary to see. The photos I’d seen were so imposing that I guess I just expected its rooms to go on and on. Inside, it felt more like a very large country house than a fortress. Of course, size is relative. As my dad used to say, “It’s...
Exploring the ruins of Athassel priory The countryside around the Rock of Cashel is scattered with ecclesiastical ruins. The entire region bears the traces of half-forgotten martyrdoms, and the struggles of early Christian saints to wrest the island’s inhabitants from the pagan beliefs the Irish had lived with since time immemorial. The monastic way of life began in the deserts of Egypt in the...
The Rock of Cashel We left Killorglin early the next morning for the long drive across Co. Limerick to Tipperary, with stops for strong lashings of Bewley’s tea to inject alertness into a blustery grey day. Our destination was the Rock of Cashel, a remarkable cluster of medieval buildings erected on a 60m (200 foot) limestone outcrop with commanding views of the Tipperary plain. Long before...