Inventing Impressionism
This was a great idea for an exhibition: Impressionist paintings connected with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who was so important in promoting the work of Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Pissarro and Sisley. Everything here was either sold by him, owned by him or in one of the influential exhibitions that he organised in Paris, London or […]
One of the wonders of the world
Being a literary type, what came into my mind when I saw the terracotta army was Shelley’s poem, ‘Oxymandias.’ I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled […]
On a cold day in January 1937, the body of nineteen year old Pamela Werner, daughter of an elderly ex-consul, was discovered near the Fox Tower in Peking with her heart ripped out. Paul French’s book, Midnight in Peking, follows the abortive investigation into the crime, brings new evidence to light, and offers a solution to […]
The books that people leave in hotels . . .
I had plenty of books on my e-reader (and a little World’s Classics edition of Persuasion, just in case), but what I actually read during my first week in China was a book that I found at the splendid Red Wall Garden Hotel in […]