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| Stephen King's 'Under the Dome' will put you under its spell When the dome comes down on a rural town in Stephen King's intriguing Under the Dome, we are slammed up against the wall of a ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Harold Larwood biography wins William Hill prize for Hamilton Duncan Hamilton has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for the second time in three yearsDuncan Hamilton has won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award for the second time in three years, for his authorised biography of Harold Larwood. Hamilton won the award in 2007 for As Long As You Don't Kiss Me, a memoir of Brian Clough.Graham Sharpe, William Hill's spokesman and the co-founder of the prize, said: "Duncan's second win is a remarkable achievement. He stunned us two years ago with his brilliant book about Brian Clough."The fact that he's done it again with a completely different sporting legend is testament to his talent as a writer." Hamilton, a former deputy editor of the Yorkshire Post and a journalist at the Nottingham Evening Post for 20 years, is only the second author to win the prize twice, following in the footsteps of the Guardian's Donald McRae, who won in 1996 for Dark Trade: Lost in Boxing and in 2002 for In Black and White: The Untold Story of Joe Louis and Jesse Owens.Cricketguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Anne 1st-edition nets record $30K US at auction A rare first-edition, first-impression edition of Anne of Green Gables sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York for $30,000 US on Friday afternoon. cbc.ca |
Tom Service on music and landscape Tom Service charts his melodic milestonesIt's not much to look at, the stretch of road between the Helensburgh roundabout and Luss, on the west side of Loch Lomond. But that small section of the A82 resounds with music for me – to be precise, the scherzo from Anton Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. The first time I listened to that piece, in Eugen Jochum's recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, that's where I was, travelling in the back of my family's car. The shock of the music, its intensity and its stark beauty, burnt itself into my memory, and is forever etched into the landscape at that precise point of the journey north from Glasgow.In fact, every corner of the route from our house in the south side of Glasgow to our cottage on the shore of Loch Etive near Taynuilt, about 11 miles east of Oban, is marked with music in my imagination. It's a journey I made hundreds of times as a child with my family, from my seat on the left-side of the passenger bench of the Montego estate, trying to ignore my brother and sister and their elbows, and looking out into the urban sprawl of the west of Glasgow, the looming mists of Ben Lomond, the castellations of the Cobbler and the Arrochar Alps, the massive wall of Ben Cruachan, and the gentle welcome of the village, the loch and our field.I did most of my listening to the music that defined my life on those car journeys, back and forth to the west Highlands once every fortnight. As my brother rocked out to indie bands, my sister to musicals, I annoyed Mum and Dad with the sonic overflow of noisy orchestral climaxes from the primitive headphones of my CD Walkman. I imprinted the cityscapes and mountainscapes with Mozart, with Bruckner, with Beethoven, with Arnold Bax, with Pierre Boulez, with James MacMillan – and with Hue and Cry, with the Pet Shop Boys, and Flanders and Swann. The A82 and A85 were and are my songlines, not just a means of getting up to the Highlands and escaping city, school and work, but experiences in themselves. Every twist of the road is a sonic palimpsest that floods my imagination, a three-dimensional physical and musical space.There's more than memory and association going on in this tethering of music to landscape. The relationship between the two is one of richest creative connections in cultural history. How is it that music creates connections with the forms, features and experiences of landscapes, from the mountains of the Highlands to the flatness of the Fens, from Alpine grandeur to Finnish tundra? Is there anything in pieces of music that defines them as being definitively of a particular landscape, any relationship between Bruckner and the A82 apart from the fact that I happened to be listening to that piece on that road at that time? Are there features of individual landscapes that are essentially musical? Or is the connection only a metaphorical nicety – one of those associations that our brains seem hard-wired to conjure?You don't have to look far in this country to find places, composers and pieces of music that seem to embody the closeness of connection between music and landscape. Elgar and the Malverns (according to his biographer, Jerrold Northrop Moore, you can find the source of much of Elgar's music in the soft, flowing forms of the Malvern hills), Vaughan Williams and Gloucestershire, Arnold Bax and Ireland and Morar, George Butterworth and Shropshire (or at least AE Housman's idealised version of it): there is a whole tradition of early 20th-century British music founded on its relationship with the land, the sort of music venerated by nationalist, conservative critics as belonging to England and the English, and lambasted as "cowpat music" by internationalists such as composer Elizabeth Lutyens.I talked to conductor Mark Elder about Elgar, of whose music he is the most insightful and impassioned champion anywhere in the world at the moment. He dismissed the idea that Elgar's music somehow wrote out the undulating forms of the Malverns in symphonic form. For him, to say that the melodies of the Second Symphony or the Cello Concerto mimic the shape of the Malverns as they rise and fall is to limit the music's potential meaning, to give it a nationalistic tag that confirms the worst aspects of Elgar's reception, the notion of him as a narrowly patriotic Edwardian flunky. You could say the same for any composer whose reception is tied to political and nationalist conceptions of landscape, such as Sibelius in Finland or Grieg in Norway, both of whom were committed nationalists in their lifetimes, and whose music is now heard as an immutable part of physical and cultural landscapes.There's only so far you can get with this sort of essentialising approach to the bonds that link pieces of music with the specific places of their creation. You can find the musical things that supposedly tie Elgar to the Malverns in thousands of other pieces of music: if it's undulating melodies and harmonic lushness you're after, then Richard Strauss or Gustav Mahler might as well be composers of Worcestershire as of Bavaria or Austria. A friend of mine told me how Sibelius reminded him of the "mountains of Finland" – without realising that Sibelius lived in a place of epic flatness, endless vistas and impenetrable pine-woods, with nothing resembling a mountain in sight.The strength of the connection between music and landscape is precisely in its illusiveness: we don't realise it, because the relationship seems so strong, so natural, but there's a lot of imaginative work going on to make a landscape musical, to make music into a landscape. No one puts more effort into that relationship than Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen's Music, at his home on the island of Sanday in Orkney. I visited Maxwell Davies ("Max", as he's known to everyone up there) in the autumn on a day of quicksilver Orcadian weather: lashing rain, coruscating sun, darkling clouds, and a continual near-gale, an elemental weatherscape in which we walked at Start Point, at the north-west tip of the island. Sanday is a flat, hard, unbeautiful islandscape. It's a place in which it's impossible to be naively romantic about your surroundings: the concrete slab of the pier, the gigantic geometry of the wind turbines, the litter of rotting farm machinery beside the road, the mean barbed wire fences that keep you out and the animals in.There is a stark poetry here, too: the white sands of Start Point shimmer even under autumnal cloud, and the mint-humbug black and white stripes of the lighthouse are a striking contrast. Yet this is a place that also becomes one of nature's most dramatic killing fields. Max told me that David Attenborough didn't need to travel to Patagonia to see orcas riding the surf to kill sea-lions – killer whales use the same technique to take seals at Start Point. We walked along the beach, followed by an inquisition of seals in the shallows – into the wind and into Max's compositional imagination.This beach is the three-dimensional stave in which Max composes. He walks through the space and time of his compositions on his daily constitutionals, turning the music he's writing into an atemporal object that he is able to manipulate however he chooses. Looking at a dune a mile or so ahead of us, he explained that he says to himself: "OK, I need to get from B major to A flat major in the time it takes me to walk there." In his musical imagination, Max slows time down, and a harmonic transition that might take only seconds in performance is extended exponentially so that he can analyse and experience the notes from any angle, ironing out any infelicities he hears with the tread of his feet in the sand. The beach, its forms and its flotsam, are also part of his pieces. He told me that if a seagull mews overhead, or if he sees a sea-sculpted piece of kelp on the beach, they may nudge his imagination in a direction he hadn't considered and be written into the fabric of the music.All of the music Maxwell Davies has composed on Sanday (he moved here from Hoy, Orkney's most mountainous island, a decade ago) is inscribed in this place. And yet all of his pieces are capable of other meanings, other interpretations. A place in one of his string quartets that might have been directly inspired by, say, a seal splashing in the surf or the sand whipping off a dune at Start Point will become part of other landscapes for his listeners – the Rest and Be Thankful pass on the road between Arrochar and Inverary, for example, a place that resonates, for me, with his First Symphony.There's no more localised or more literal connection between landscape and music than in Max's imagination and his creativity. But his example reveals just how illusive and contingent those bonds are in reality. They are made through individual, personal experiences of place and music. The deep connection between the experience of a piece of music and the experience of a landscape is their shared temporality. To walk in a landscape – or even to drive through it – is not just to physically place yourself in it, it's to imagine it, as well; to listen to a piece of music isn't just to experience the vibrations of frequencies and overtones, it's to imagine what the music is, how it makes you feel. That's why, for me, the A82 hums with music, why the Munros from Ben Lomond to Buachaille Etive Mòr sing songs of Dvorák and Mahler. The music isn't a soundtrack to the landscape, any more than climbing up Ben Cruachan is an accompaniment to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: they are connected because they are experiences that I have realised in my mind and body. That's their strength and their fragility, in the wholly personal way that we embody those connections between music and place.Yet there are revelations, however individual, to be found in this mysterious connectedness. When I was a teenager, my Dad took me up Beinn a'Chreachain, one of the Munros above Bridge of Orchy, where, on a rare cloudless and windless day in the west Highlands, the only sound was the coursing of blood through my body after a final, lung-bursting pull up to the summit. As the adrenaline subsided, in that astonishing, ear-filling silence up there, I looked north-west, over to the Black Mount. I felt as if I had disappeared into the landscape, become part of the glaciated rocks beneath me. It was the same imaginative space that Bruckner's symphonies had just opened in my mind, a sense of vastness of scale and infinity of perspective, but a connectedness with something essentially human, too. I was in another world from anything that Bruckner encountered in his lifetime in 19th-century Austria, but I knew that this experience of Munro-scape had taught me something profound about his symphonies. I felt as if I had walked into the music, and had listened to the landscape. Dad and I climbed down, and we drove the A82, through all of its music and its memories, back to Glasgow.Classical musicHighlandsTom Serviceguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Alexandria: an author's tour TS Learner, author of a new thriller set in 1970s Alexandria, takes us on a tour of the catacombs, cafes and archeological sites of Egypt's decadent colonial jewelAlexandria is not an obvious tourist destination, but it's worth taking a few days out to discover why this layered cake of a city has been muse to so many literary giants. Founded by Alexander the Great in 331BC, it was in Alexandria that EM Forster had his first love affair, Daphne du Maurier wrote Rebecca and Lawrence Durrell (inspired by the political complexity of pre-Nasser Egypt) wrote The Alexandria Quartet.Favourite place to eat: The Fish MarketOne has to be a little careful in Egypt, but The Fish Market on the Corniche is one place where it is safe to eat the salads. Alexandria is very much a port town, and at The Fish Market you simply go up and point to your favourite displayed fish, which is then cooked exactly how you wish. It's open late, perfect for a romantic midnight sojourn after strolling along the seafront, and also serves alcohol – though it is worth bearing in mind local attitudes towards drinking.• Tel: 03 480 5119Favourite activities: Walking and divingTo understand the historical depth of Alex is to soak up the ambience. A wonderful set of maps called Cultural Routes of Alexandria (available from the tourist office or Alexandrian library bookshop) has clear descriptions of all landmarks of interest, from Durrell's house to Pompey's Pillar. Taxis are everywhere (although there is a flat local rate and a tourist rate, so be prepared to bargain down) and you can always take a hantour horse-pulled cart. And if you're interested in Cleopatra, there's good diving: the sea floor is littered with relics from the infamous queen's dwellings.• Dive Alexandria: alexandra-dive.com, tel: 03-4832045Favourite archaeological site: The Catacombs of Kom Ash-ShuqqafaWhat I love about these catacombs is the curious mix of Roman, early Christian and Persian icons; my favourite is a Roman legionary with the head of Anubis, found in the tomb of a first-century Alexandrian businessman. There is also the Triclinium, a banquet hall where people would picnic annually to commemorate the death dates of their loved ones. Also to be seen are hidden symbols of early Christianity (the fish) in murals in the nearby Tigrane and Wardian tombs, both beautiful examples of the wacky, mixed-up Alexandrian Hellenistic style. Keep a look out for Medusa, placed there to frighten off grave robbers.• Tel: 03-4845800Favourite place for high tea: Salamlek Palace Hotel and CasinoSituated in the Montazah gardens, this hotel retains a sense of how the wealthy pashas lived before Nasser overhauled colonial Egypt. An ornate folly, the hotel was originally a 19th-century hunting lodge built by Khedive Abbas II to amuse his Viennese mistress. Order tea and cakes in the smaller café from uniformed waiters in an old-world atmosphere, and check out the photos of King Farouk and friends in the foyer. And for those 1970s enthusiasts (of whom I'm one), the Palestine Hotel on the water nearby is a total James Bond cliché.Favourite church: St CatherineSt Catherine was the main Catholic church for the Italian Alexandrian community, honouring the saint martyred by the Romans in the early fourth century. The church is also home to the tomb of exiled King Victor Emmanuel III, buried here in 1947 after he refused an Italian burial due to his fascist allegiances, as well as the largest pipe organ in Egypt. And if you're after a miracle, there's a shrine to St Sabine, patron saint of conception. Favourite café: The AtheniosSituated on the Midan Ramla, the heart of 19th- and 20th-century Alexandria, the ornate Athenios' heyday is past. But you can still get good spannikoas, coffee and mint tea. Best to cast your imagination back to the Alexandria of the 1920s and 30s, when this square was a fashionable promenade for wealthy Europeans and the Athenios would have been the courting site of many a doomed love story. Favourite museum: Cavafy's HouseFor a flavour of decadent colonial Alexandria, read the Greek Alexandrian poet Constantine Cavafy and his odes to male beauty, translated into English by fellow aesthete EM Forster. Cavafy's bedroom and study have been reconstructed and a sense of loneliness still haunts the place.• 4 Sharia Sharm ash-Sheikh. Open Tuesday-Wednesday, Friday-Saturday from 10am-3pm; Thursday and Sunday 10am-5pm. Admission is 10 LE.Favourite myth: The search for Alexander's tombPtolemy I built Alexander's tomb after kidnapping his corpse on its way to be buried in Macedonia. Known as the Soma, it became a famous monument – until it disappeared sometime around the third century in an era of war and plunder. For the last hundred years, it has rivalled the holy grail as an archaeological mystery. One Polish Egyptologist tried to convince me it was buried under a mosque on Al Nabi Danial Street, and in the 1970s it was the subject of investigation by a group of American psychics, rather to the bemusement of the locals.Favourite trip out: El Alamein MemorialIt doesn't get much more moving than this Commonwealth cemetery for the dead of the second world war. Among the miles of plain, white crosses, look closely for inscriptions marking groups of unknown soldiers, buried together. Don't forget to visit the Italian and German memorials nearby – the Italian mausoleum is positively Roman. Daily buses run from the Cecil Hotel. Favourite venue: Alexandrian Opera HouseThis small but elegant opera house was the hub of wealthy colonial Alexandria; all the big names performed here, from Sarah Bernhardt to Maria Callas. Dress code is theoretically formal but they will supply ties for the men at the door. The interior is beautifully restored and there is a decorative ceiling with cameos of Mozart, Beethoven, Bizet, Bach and Handel. A local story goes that on the opening night after Nasser's socialist revolution, a member of the new Arabic elite asked his neighbour who they might be, to which the neighbour replied, knowingly, "The architects."• 22 El Horreya Rd. Tel: 03-4865106, 03-4800138Favourite place to stay: The Windsor Palace HotelSmaller and more intimate that the more famous Cecil Hotel, this surreally neo-classical building reeks of Egypt's colonial past. The rooms have high ceilings and an aging grandeur, and it's worth paying extra for a view of the sweeping seafront (lovely at sunset). My room reminded me of the Regency-style bedroom in 2001: A Space Odyssey – minus the astronaut, of course.• 17 EL Shohada Street, Ramal Station. Tel: 03-4808700, fax: 03-4809090; paradiseinnegypt.com/Home/windsor/index.htmTS Learner's new thriller Sphinx is published this month by Sphere at £6.99.EgyptCultural tripsCity breaksEM ForsterDaphne Du Maurierguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |