Author: Richard Carter

A fat, bearded chap with a Charles Darwin fixation.

Common Ground

by Rob Cowen A strange book about a local edge-land. This book, which has received rave reviews, wasn't what I expected. I was expecting a fairly typical ‘nature writing’ account of the author's local patch of edge-land near Harrogate in Yorkshire. Perhaps I should have read the dust-jacket more carefully: Blurring the boundaries of memoir,… Continue reading Common Ground

Published

Urne-burial

by Sir Thomas Browne Reflections on the iniquity of oblivion. I first encountered the seventeenth-century polymath Sir Thomas Browne in an essay by one of my favourite writers, Stephen Jay Gould. Many years later, I encountered him again in W.G. Sebald's mastepiece, The Rings of Saturn. Sebald refers to Browne's essay on an ancient urn-burial… Continue reading Urne-burial

Sir Thomas Browne: a life

by Reid Barbour Biography of a 17th-century polymath. An academic, though entertaining biography of the 17th-century polymath, Sir Thomas Browne. I struggled a bit in places, as, being an academic book, it assumed greater prior knowledge in the reader than I actually had.

Published

Hitch 22

by Christopher Hitchens A memoir. The late Christopher Hitchens' memoir mainly comprises the memories of a hard-working, hard-thinking, hard-drinking journalist. There is a lot of politics in this book. But there is also plenty of humour, especially when Hitchens is laying into hypocrisy. But keep a dictionary to hand for looking up the occasional difficult… Continue reading Hitch 22

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The Children of Húrin

by J.R.R. Tolkien Tolkien's longest unfinished tale (now finished). Having been a huge Tolkien fan in my youth, I decided to give the newly published Children of Húrin a try, being already familiar with the story from an incomplete version that had previously been published in Tolkien's Unfinished Tales. This new version has been made… Continue reading The Children of Húrin

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