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“... 16th-century Siena, but it is viewed from a very different angle, that of the Renaissance bastion. Simon Pepper and Nicholas Adams are concerned with military architecture and siege warfare. Like Richard Krautheimer, they are art historians concerned to place art in context. Their study of the bastions designed for Siena by the architect Baldassare ...”

“... spoon, wipes his mouth and rises from the table like a new tele-hybrid, part Jonathan Meades, part Simon Schama, for another assay: ‘The mid-16th century, in gastronomic terms, was precisely such an exotic place.’ And off we go with ‘How to smeare a rabbet or a necke of mutton’, from The Good Hous-wives treasurie. Beeing a verye necessarie Booke ...”

“... Asia – Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia – bringing back on the north-easterly monsoon pepper, spices, camphor, resin and, above all, gold from the newly discovered mines of Sumatra and Sarawak. They carried with them hundreds of passengers exporting every variety of Buddhism and Hinduism, their Sanskrit language and their art and architecture. At ...”

“... an indigo and red fake’) but as trade developed in the 17th century, indigo was up there with pepper and cloves in volume and value. Stronger in colour, and cheaper, imported tropical indigo eventually destroyed the European woad industry – just as the Indian indigo trade was to be ruined by synthetic indigo in the 19th and 20th centuries. Woad ...”

“... lounge.) In addition to all this, there is an apparently unending succession of books, of which Simon Callow’s ongoing biography is the most monumental, now two volumes in and not even arrived at The Third Man, the 1949 movie that made Welles a myth. Callow’s second volume, Hello Americans, is named after the series of radio broadcasts Welles delivered ...”

“... out of the kettle again; this time it had been cut into three long slices. A few months later, Simon Beamon, one of Pynchon’s servants, refused to help Parsons carry home some heavy sacks of flour. But when he trotted away on his ‘gentle, quiet horse’, he fell off, not once but three times, even though the placid horse had not shied and continued to ...”

“... but remains tirelessly cogent in its pursuit of it. Of the famous shows, perhaps only the David Simon classic The Wire adds the dimensions of fallibility and compromise to the image of the police. Here the police sometimes act with righteous violence, sometimes not. Often they are stymied by the peevishness and self-interest of police bureaucracy. They live ...”

“... the book Julius attends a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, conducted by Simon Rattle. He notices details in the music for the first time, relishing for instance a third movement that is ‘loud, rude and as burlesque as it could conceivably be’. After the concert he inadvertently uses an emergency exit, one that leads directly to a ...”

“... for government.’ ‘Pro-Corbyn memes and football chants are a start,’ Gilbert wrote in Red Pepper in September 2017. (It looks like I’m mocking him, but I’m not. I too was thrilled by the surprise result of the 2017 election and remember wishing Fisher had been alive to see it.) ‘What new forms of expression may emerge in the years ahead, nobody ...”