No comments about George Bishop: Seventeenth-Century Soldier Turned Quaker.

1 comments about When the Going Was Good.

1. This book is a 'Must Read' for the following lot of people:
   1) Those who have an appreciation for Waugh's fiction.
   2) Those who have an interest in colonial Great Britain just before the fall of the British Empire when, arguably, it was at its height.
   3) Those who have traveled well beyond the "It is Tuesday, this must be Bangkok" scheme of things.
   4) Those who enjoy social satire mixed with dry wit, and enlivened by a wonderful sense of the absurd.
   5) Connoisseurs of the English language in its written form.

   'When the Going was Good' is five travel episodes written in a period from 1929 to 1935, as abridged by the author for inclusion in this book. These episodes range from a casual, meandering cruise of the Mediterranean Sea in 1929 to reportage on the invasion of Ethiopia by Italy in 1935 presaging the Second World War. In between are the coronation of Emperor Haille Salasie Ras Tafare(the first Rastafarian), some random "Globe-trotting" beginning in Aden running through the Zanzibar coast and then down to the Congo, and finally an attempted trip from British Guyana down through Brazil.
   Obviously, the really beautiful thing about any book by Evelyn Waugh is the concise, incisive, succint and often surgically precise use of the Queen's English. What makes these gems particularly precious is that they are set in conditions that were considered laughably backward and dangerously primitive even for the standards of the early part of the 20th century. Any such journey into the Dark Continent, and into the New World promises to be fraught with dangers and difficulties almost beyond description. Fortunately for the world of literature these were met by an author who was up to the task of describing these incidents in a way that makes them interesting, funny, and illuminating. Waugh has an uncanny ablity to use the slings and arrows that life sends one's way as weapons of satire and delight. Perhaps the most delightful vignette in this book filled with delightful vignettes is his description of his adventures with the well-meaning but misinformed American theological professor who is the leading authority on the Ethiopian form of Christiantiy, and who meanwhile is totally confused by its religous rites. Their time together takes them from the midst of the royal coronation to a field trip trek through wilderness to that church's holiest shrine in the company of a multi-talented fly by the seat of the pants Armenian chauffeur and an Ethipioan urchin whom they pick up along the way. Suffice it to say that the material Waugh got in that one trip was of the sort that one could write an entire short book from, and indeed this is just what he did in the novella titled 'Black Mischief.' Yes, that's correct, Waugh fans, the stuff of some of his books was captured right here on these pages during these travels and herein lies a treasure trove of details that one finds later played out in the novella mentioned above, in 'A Handful of Dust' and even 'Brideshead Revisited.' Thus, reading these accounts of his travels really helps to bring alive those other stories which you have probably read and wondered about where he got his inspiration. Finally, for history buffs, one gets to literally live the life of the colonial gentleman in the midst of these pages because Waugh, afterall belonged to the smart set and the smart set made up a significant portion, however small, of the colonial population that ran the British Empire. So, when Evelyn goes travelling, he doesn't necessarily do it with a backback upon his back trudging to and fro. No, he has a set of trunks and helpers, and old school ties that lead to introductions which in turn lead to social sitauations that develop into adventures and eventually become fodder for his travelogues. The point being that because this was the author's life, we get to witness firsthand the life of Imperial Britain as it existed in the African colonies and British spheres of influence. This is heady stuff and really a wonderful kind of social history that anyone from the avid social voyeur-ethnographic tourist to the fan of the British colonial empire should appreciate.
   'When the Going was Good" is a book that I can heartily recommend, and one that I took much pleasure from reading.

No comments about The Life of Captain Frederick Marryat (A Fireship CONTEMPORIZED CLASSIC).

No comments about Gewn Raverat: Friends, Family & Affections.

No comments about The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vols. 5 and 6 : 1866-1874.

No comments about Cockburn and the British Navy in Transition: Admiral Sir George Cockburn 1772-1853 (Studies in Maritime History).

No comments about Kings and Queens of Britain's Golden Age: The glorious monarchs of the golden age of Britain, from Henry VII, Henry VIII and the magnificent reign of Elizabeth ... of the Stuarts and the rule of Queen Anne.

No comments about David Lloyd George: A Political Life : Organizer of Victory, 1912-1916 (David Lloyd George).

5 comments about Wilde Album: Public and Private Images of Oscar Wilde.

1. Mr. Oscar Wilde, the toast of all London for his successful plays revealing the immoral soft underbelly of the British aristocracy, received a slanderous calling card at his club from the Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Al was assisting Mr. Wilde in his investigations of the more corrupt and immoral and hypocritical aspects of those filthily wealthy imperialists.
   
   At Al's urgent request, Mr. Wilde filed suit for slander against Al's own father, serving as noted in this book in Mr. Wilde's own words, as the dice in a cruel and callous oedipal gamble between father and son. Mr. Wilde lost; the petit bourgeois father won and before the Crown brought charges against Mr. WIlde under a new immoral activities act, the father had Mr. Wilde's home ramsacked and auctioned, all of Mr. Wilde's treasured and expensive belongings, and those of his wife and two small sons, in order ostensibly to cover his own legal costs in defending himself against Mr. Wilde's charge of slander. The auction, staged as it was, brought only a very small percentage of its actual worth, yet destroyed all that the family owned.
   
   Mr. Wilde's grandson, in gathering this present album, mentions the fact of this destruction of his family heritage by alluding to the registry of six family albums which were sold and discarded beyond any recovery. Merlin mentions this fact cold, without further comment, but the skilled reader may read between the lines the deep and painful import of this action to Merlin personally. Thus this present effort grows immeasurably poignant and important.
   
   Though others praise the photographs here, it is the comprehensive and extensive and brilliant essay by Merlin here which makes this book as well. This book grows thereby essential for any reader of the English language, and for any reader of Irish resistance to English colonialist power, in particular that fatal power which was so coldly brought to bear against its most subtle and charming and astute and eloquent and Irish critic, greater even than GB Shaw, more subtle even than the great Mr. James Joyce.
   
   Never mind please my ramblings nor the effusiveness of other reviews which here appear upon this page. My one qualm regarding this book is that it is not BIG enough!
   
   Please see as well the excellent, if painfully abridged, production of An Ideal Husband in the BBC collection The Oscar Wilde Collection (The Importance of Being Earnest / The Picture of Dorian Gray / An Ideal Husband / Lady Windermere's Fan) if only to see younger and slimmer and in his prime he who would later play for them Sherlock Holmes. The Importance . . .in this collection is also tolerable if abridged and awkward; Lady Windermere's Fan begins slow with the mournful Lord, but grows inexorably to a heart wrenching finale without sentimentality.
   
   Read all of Mr. Wilde's published work (lacking of course the bulk his writings for Women's World, and lacking his original French text of Salome) in Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Collins Classics). The original French text of Salome you may find at Salome: Drame en un acte (Collected Works of Oscar Wilde) in order to perform your own translation into English which will undoubtedly replace Al's. It is also available in a Spanish translation at Salome - Bajo El Monte and a fine selection of his short stories at El Fantasma de Canterville y Otros Cuentos (Serie Roja Alfaguara) (Serie Roja Alfaguara).
   
   Please read this book and know the extent of the destructive power of an offended British aristocracy, a destiny, as Merlin here indicates, as inexorable as any ancient Greek drama. Merlin's assessments of his grandfather's oeuvre are also excellent and right on, although too brief! Find further critical work by himself as well as by his father Vyvyan Holland, whose photographs as a small boy are so telling here.



2. What a Gem! If you are a fan of Oscar Wilde then this book is indispensable.
   My only gripe is that it is too small. A larger format would have shown off the many Napoleon Sarony photos (the largest collection in one publication) If the publisher and Mr Holland ever read this....I'd gladly shell out for a large format edition. Other than that, I'm quite too utterly ecstatic about the book.......WELL DONE!



3. This volume is more touching and insightful than most
   works about Oscar Wilde tend to be. It is filled with
   the narrative commentary of Wilde's grandson,
   Merlin Holland, who gives honest opinions as well
   as factual detail about the various stages of
   Oscar Wilde's life.
   The treasures, however, are the multitudes of
   photographs, memorabilia, and paintings that are
   included -- as well as drawings, satirical cartoons
   (mostly lampooning Oscar, both at Oxford and later
   in life), and wonderful notations under the items.
   The most interesting photographs, for me, are
   the ones which were done by Napoleon Sarony. They
   seem to touch a more thoughtful, poetic, dreamy
   Oscar, rather than the posing bon vivant or the
   deliberately provocative aesthete/decadent.
   The volume does well to have one of those photos
   on the cover, as well as having a different photo
   beside the title page. The grotesque photos,
   that almost make one cringe, though, are of
   Oscar in a skirted Greek national costume
   (with boots!) from April 1877; Oscar in a
   checkered suit and bowler hat at Oxford in
   1878, and Oscar at age 2 in a blue velvet
   dress, a daguerreotype which has been color
   tinted. The weirdest photos are of the
   "blond tiger/panther" Lord Alfred Douglas,
   would-be "friend" and lover of Oscar. His
   eyes look vacant, haunted, cold in most of
   the photos , except for the one on page 147,
   in which he looks touchingly sensitive and
   lonely...the caption below the picture says
   it all: "Douglas aged 23. 'Your slim gilt
   soul walks between passion and poetry. I know
   Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you
   in Greek days,' Wilde wrote to him around that
   time."
   Truly a remarkable album of memories.



4. This is a sparkling gem for all fans of Oscar Wilde. It is a brilliant retelling of Oscar's life through pictures. Filled with everything from photographs of Wilde the aesthete to hilarious caricatures of him from Punch magazine to some of Wilde's own drawings and notes, this fabulous little book has it all. Many of the items I have not seen in any other volume. It goes wonderfully well coupled with Richard Ellman's gorgeous biography or it stands tall on its own. All and all, a marvelous book that I cannot possibly recommend highly enough.



5. Cutting to the chase, the real prize in this marvelous little book are the photographs. For once, we get something other than the usual lot that appear in books with a Wilde connection. Mr. Holland has achieved through his pictures (most seem to be from the family collection) something which most texts don't do..... a feel for the whole of Wilde the man. There is a human dimension to this slim volume that one does not find elsewhere. There are pictures of ancestors, parents, editorial cartoons, advertisements, all in relatively strict chronological order, from the child in a dress (as was customary for little boys in the period) to the student, the developing fop, the lampooned character, the ludicrous pairing with Bosie... who looks perpetually bored and thoroughly uninteresting... to the depressing denouement, death bed and funerary monuments.

   The text reveals nothing new but it is elegantly written. Both of Wilde's children were devoted to the memory of their father. It is evident that the grandson was raised in like manner.

   Of Wilde's two boys, Cyril died in WWI without issue. Mr. Holland is the grandson of the other, Vyvyan.

   If you are interested in the period, England and Ireland in late 19th century, Wilde, gay history, etc. buy this book. It is worth infinitely more than it costs.

No comments about Henry Stratford Persse's Letters from Galway to America, 1821-1832 (Irish Narrative Series).