A S H Smyth › The tour of Babel

Skip to content

Tag Archives: non-fiction

The tour of Babel

Friday, January 4, 2019

Review of Gaston Dorren’s Babel: Around the World in 20 Languages. — For Geographical

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Gaston Dorren, Geographical, linguistics, Royal Geographical Society | Comments (0)

Intelligence review

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

‘For centuries before the Second World War, educated British people knew far more about intelligence operations recorded in the Bible than they did about the role of intelligence at any moment in their own history.’ Nowadays, one might think, few would even know that. But that’s where Christopher Andrew – Emeritus Professor of Modern and […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Afghanistan, Allen Lane, America, Ancient Egypt, army, Bletchley Park, Cardinal Richelieu, China, Christianity, Christopher Andrew, Christopher Marlowe, CIA, Clausewitz, Elizabeth I, Francis Walsingham, history, Holland, India, Islam, Israel, Ivan the Terrible, Julius Caesar, MI5, MI6, Napoleon, Pearl Harbour, Russia, spies, Stalin, Sun Tzu, the Bible, the Cold War, the KGB, the Medway, The Oldie, the Spanish Armada, University of Cambridge, Vasili Mitrokhin, Venice, war, Waterloo, WWII, Xenophon | Comments (0)

Monty’s trouble

Monday, May 28, 2018

A footsoldier’s review of Antony Beevor’s Arnhem: the Battle for the Bridges, 1944. — For The Oldie

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged 1st Airborne Division, Allied Expeditionary Force, Antony Beevor, army, Arnhem, books, Britishness, engineering, Field Marshal Montgomery, Flanders, General Bradley, General Eisenhower, General Patton, Germans, history, Holland, Nijmegen, Operation Market Garden, paratroopers, Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld, the Dutch, The Oldie, the Schutzstaffel, the Wehrmacht, WW2 | Comments (0)

NEWS AT A GLANCE

Monday, February 19, 2018

. In China the dials of a clock turn round instead of the hands. — The Nelson Evening Mail, September 8 1908 . Benedict Cumberbatch reads Oryx magazine. A piece of pasta (dry) weighs essentially one gram. A man can only care about so many things. Labels are for clothes. In Bosnian there are no words for […]

Filed in Journalism, NEWS AT A GLANCE | Also tagged Benedict Cumberbatch, Bosnian, brothers, China, clothing, cows, Darryl Gerrity, death, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Englishmen, fiction, film, friends, grapes, Hawaii, health, horology, Islam, love, magazines, measurements, men, music, Nelson Evening Mail, pasta, pornography, Qatar Airways, Reading, religion, Russians, Virginia, white goods | Comments (2)

Cannon law

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Review of Kim A Wagner’s The Skull of Alum Bheg: The Life and Death of a Rebel of 1857. — For The Spectator

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged Alum Bheg, army, Bengal Native Infantry, Brigadier-General John Nicholson, British Empire, colonialism, death, geography, history, India, Indian Mutiny, Kim A Wagner, Pakistan, Queen Mary University of London, religion, sepoys, Sialkot, the East India Company, The Spectator | Comments (0)

Fair tradesmen

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Review of a Norwegian book on loft conversions. (Standard.) — For The Spectator

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged carpentry, employment, MacLehose Press, Norway, Norwegian, Ole Thorstensen, Seán Kinsella, Spectator, translation | Comments (0)

Egyptomania

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Review of three books on Ancient Egypt: Egypt: People, Pharaohs, Gods, by Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen; Egyptomania: A History of Fascination, Obsession and Fantasy, by Ronald H. Fritze; and Writings from Ancient Egypt, by Toby Wilkinson. — For The Spectator

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged academia, Egypt, hieroglyphs, history, Rainer Hagen, religion, Ronald H. Fritze, Rose-Marie Hagen, Toby Wilkinson, translation | Comments (0)

Temper, temper

Monday, December 1, 2008

How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) Ross W. Duffin W.W. Norton, £9.99, p196 . When William Gardiner lamented in 1832 that ‘the Deity seems to have left music in an unfinished state’ he was referring to a seeming paradox of tuning: if you start from C and keep adding fifths, twelve […]

Filed in Journalism, review | Also tagged academia, equal temperament, harmony, Mozart, music, Music Teacher, orchestras, Ross W Duffin, school, WW Norton | Comments (0)