Showing posts with label history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label history. Show all posts

Friday, July 8, 2016

Enemy of Rome by Leonard Cottrell (Pan, 1962)

Another paperback from The Green Shed:


In May, 218 B.C., Hannibal of Carthage set out from Spain with over 100,000 troops--the most tremendous fighting force assembled since the days of Alexander the Great.

His destination--Rome.  His aim--the destruction of its great empire.

So began an immortal campaign that lasted sixteen fierce and bloody years...revealed Hannibal as an inspired military genius...and culminated in a battle of giants which was to decide the fate of European civilisation.
 It's an epic story all right--so why is the cover so bloody dull?

I mean, it was a military campaign that abounded in such picturesque things as Roman legions, Gaulish warriors fighting "naked to the navel", the Alps, pitched battles and elephants--and the best the cover artist could do was squeeze a few of these into the background?  You have to look very carefully even to see the elephants!

0/10 for your cover design, Pan.  0/10!

Thursday, April 7, 2016

A History of Courting by E.S. Turner (Pan, 1958)


Down deep in hell there let them dwell
and bundle on that bed
Then turn and roll without control
Till all their lusts are fed.

That was how they did it in America in the 18th century.  Bundling it was called.  Not as naughty as it sounds.

In Moscow in 1952 they courted quite differently.  It went like this: The boy was a collective farmer, and the girl a tractor driver working on the same night-shift.  Sighed the girl: 'How wonderful it is to work on such a beautiful night under the full moon and do one's utmost to save petrol!'  Exclaimed the boy: 'The night inspires me to over-fulfill my quota by a higher and still higher percentage.'  Later he admitted: 'I fell in love with your working achievement from the very first moment.

There's no end to the different methods employed in this enchanting game, practised by nearly all of us some time or another.

You'll love this book.  It's instructive.  It's fascinating!
Here we have a very decorous couple from the 1950s looking at a picture of a not-so-decorous couple from an earlier era.  It all seems a bit too clean-cut and peachy keen to be true: surely the 1950s was the era of making out in drive-ins and in the back seats of cinemas?

The answer is, it was, and this book is happy to record it.  It also discusses--yes!--bundling, along with valentines, chaperones, flappers and a thousand and one other elements of courtship in days gone by.  And of course it also has fun with the thoughts of various "experts" on love, marriage and morals through the centuries.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

4000 Years Under the Sea by Philippe Diolé (Pan, 1957)


The fascinating pursuit of undersea archaeology has been much developed in recent years.  In this book Philippe Diolé , who wrote The Undersea Adventure, tells enthusiastically of 'free diving' experiences off the coasts of Southern France and North Africa.  He shows that the rewards are not won without a hard struggle.  A sunk ship laden with statues or wine-jars may be located; but it will be buried under a dozen feet of oozy mud.  A statue may be so encrusted with molluscs or overgrown with sea vegetation as to be unrecognisable.  To expose the walls of a Roman villa lying beneath the Mediterranean, divers worked four years, lifting first a top layer of sand, next a clay deposit thirty inches deep, and finally digging into pebbles and mud.  By linking the discoveries with history, M. Diolé gives fascinating information about seamanship, trade, wines and the spread of cultures in antiquity.