The Crimson Field: Nursing at the Western Front
Happy to recommend a PBS/BBC mini-series that hasn’t got much attention: The Crimson Field Set in an imaginary field hospital …
Category Archives: Art & Culture
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain’s Memoir of WW I
Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, recently brought to view by the movie of the same name, unaccountably escaped my decades long reading …
Miracolo a Milano — Neo Realism in Italy Goes Magical
Several weeks ago at the wonderful Italian language school, Romanica, in Modena, Italy one of the after class treats was a …
Vera Brittain: Not only the Movie, the Book
Military historian, Simon Jones, says Vera Brittain’s memoir, Testament of Youth, upon which the new movie is based, is one …
Testament of Youth — WW I Pacifist Comes to Film
Vera Brittain, one of the least lost of the Lost Generation of WW I, is on her third revival …
Boots to the Sun — An Italian Memoir of the “Great War”
Two indispensable companions are always with me on late-life trips across the seven continents. Leading the way is my excited-to-be-there, take-everything-in life …
Naples Liberated: Curzio Malaparte’s “The Skin”
It is hard to think of another work of fiction of such savage irony as Curzio Malaparte‘s La Pelle (1949) …
The Water Diviner: In Galipolli Looking for Bones
Russell Crowe New Zealand/Australia’s perennial candidate for the movies’ most manly man, does a creditable job of re-visiting the trauma of …
Salt of the Earth: Sabastião Salgado Looks At Worlds in Trouble and One of Healing
Sebastião Salgado’s photography is among the most stunning in the history of the camera. Many talented and fully engaged witnesses with cameras …
The Pope and Mussolini
Reading David Kertzer’s The Pope and Mussolini:The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe will be a …
Birdsong: A Novel of Love and War
If you’ve never read anything about life in the trenches during World War One, Birdsong: A Novel of Love and …
Xiao Hong — Women in Rural China
Some months ago I saw The Golden Era, a recent movie by Ann Hui about a ground breaking Chinese woman writer …