A NERVOUS SPLENDOR by Frederic Morton is my current and highly recommended read — a fascinating glimpse of late 19C Vienna. It’s like a group biography of Freud, Mahler, Klimt and others against the glittering brittleness of the Hapsburg Empire. And GEORGETTE HEYER’s Regency novels are my go-to for clever but light entertainment. She is underrated as a mistress of piercingly entertaining character portrayals and comedy of manners.
I absolutely love that book. A real underrated gem. I think he has another one about Vienna on the eve of the First World War that I keep meaning to read
I’ve just read ‘Mortal Secrets’ by Frank Tallis on Freud, Vienna and ‘the making of the modern mind’ which I thought fascinating and very well written (by a psychoanalyst).
It’s great isn’t it? (Also his book THE ACT OF LIVING). I am in Vienna now and in the spirit have just started VIENNA: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Cockett and I think it is going to be another fascinating read.
Georgette Heyer is brilliant: I skidded rather successfully through an otherwise unrevised History A’Level thanks to ‘An Infamous Army’, her novel about the Battle of Waterloo
It was this book that led me to Morton’s follow-on socio-cultural history ‘Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913-1914’. From there I seem to have acquired a mini-library of books about Vienna and the Habsburg Empire under Franz Joseph I. It has resulted in a couple of visits to Vienna simply to to enjoy walks among its neo-classical, Secession and Modernist architecture in an attempt to experience the physical context of a lost era.
It’s also piqued an interest in Austrian history during the inter-war years, which is equally fascinating for the turmoil of a fragile Republic born from the Great War and the attempt by its political leaders to maintain Austrian sovereignty by keeping Hitler at arm’s length. For any reader interested a good starting point is George Clare’s ‘The Last Waltz’, a poignant family biography which recounts how as assimilated Jews (and more Austrian and patriotic than many Austrian-Germans of the period) his immediate family were decimated in the aftermath of Hitler’s 1938 Anschluss. Clare writes in beautiful prose. His anguish at the loss of family and the Viennese culture they were brought up to so strongly value and believe in (described so well by Frederic Morton in his books) will leave readers deeply saddened at the loss of a splendid era and the people who helped make it so.
It has to be the 21st century. Thanks to Cataract surgery, hearing aids and my iPad, (un available in previous centuries) I can enjoy music and art from all centuries, news online, cricket rugby and golf on screen and of course James’s weekly SUBSTACK.
Depends on the perspective: 12th century renaissance for the mediaeval Man climbing out of mediaeval restrictive thought; 18th century for great architecture and paintings of stunning English countryside!
And have you read The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King.
I loved it - my favourite recent book. It is about the last maker of vellum scrolls in the 15th century in Florence while up north the printing press is appearing so the skills and expertise of making and writing on vellum will disappear. But it’s also about the growth and dissemination of knowledge of Greek and Roman texts and people’s increasing understanding of their world as texts came across from Constantinople after 1453. The detail is exquisite and it so deepened my understanding of how and why the Renaissance developed in Italy. Loved it! Thanks for your reply!
I’ll go with the 20th, even though the first half (two World Wars, Spanish flu, the Great Depression and much much more) was unimaginably awful. But the second half was cool. I was born in 1957.
Unquestionably the 19th century for me: the consequences wrought by the Industrial Revolution, the year without summer, the revolutions of 1848, second empire France and the Franco-Prussian war, fin de siècle Europe are just a few of my obsessions, to say nothing of the art and literature. Western Civilisation, culture and empire reaching its zenith before it all inevitably comes crashing down.
Thanks to CS Forester, Patrick O'Brian, and Georgette Heyer, I basically have an unlimited appetite for fiction set in the early 19th century. These books really unlocked my previous inability to get on with Jane Austen, and thanks either to your, or Henry Oliver's, proselytising, I'm now really enjoying Middlemarch.
I loved CS Forester when I was a kid - recall being completely entranced by (I think?) The Gun. I really need to read Patrick O'Brian as I keep seeing him recommended recently. Heretically I'm not much of a Middlemarch fan but thinking of giving George Eliot another go soon
Great Econ podcast. Re the mention of Robespierre, the book to read is Ruth Scurr's biography "Fatal Purity". He is a fascinating character and this book is so well-written.
Thank you! Yes I read the Ruth Scurr book a few years ago and loved it. On a similar theme I'm currently reading Robert Darnton's book about the origins of the French Revolution, The Revolutionary Temper and really loving it
Mr Bennett -- Your phrase "the book to read" made me wonder whether you were acquainted with Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence," where that elegantly confident phrase appears regularly.
1) Got to try the Cat Massacre again! Gave my copy away years ago. 2) I use AI every day and all day and it is amazing and I have no doubt that the hallucination problem will never be solved. It’s not a person, its “goal” is the answer you want, not the “truth” like a person’s. 3) reading books by larry mcmurtry. Recommend so far. 4) This year I read most of the lew archer books. I would have opened them, but i had a hard to ignore recommendation. Wow. He writes like a dreamer’s dream. 5) I think the best book on the creative life might be The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. Simply an amazing look under the hood. 6) johnson has to read in abridgment, there is a very good one where they just cut out all the letters and irrelevant speeches and it reads very smoothly and not at all like an abridgment 7) pepys on the other hand must be read in the original, but only in the latham mathews edition . I am three (of pepy’s) years in and it is great before bed reading after the kids go to sleep 8) this is after finishing (i think) 9) james Lees-Milne excellent diaries where i went after 10) jock colvill’s . But enough boring book suggestion.
A book I'm reading at the moment that's the best fiction so far about AI is Paul Carr's "The Confessions," and I highly recommend it. That said it's based in the present (or five minutes into the future as the saying went, or will go) and not about the 18th century.
I finished Julian Jackson’s ‘France on Trial’ today. Now moving on to Ernest Gellner’s ‘Book, Sword and Plough’ and to balance the rather dour contents, it shall be paired with a few Borges short stories.
The Great Cat Massacre is excellent, I shudder at the thought of the original version of Little Red Riding Hood. I picked it up when looking for books similar to ‘The Cheese and the Worms’ which remains the classic micro history. An Instance of the Fingerpost is also astoundingly good at conveying how alien the past was. As a historical novel I found it much better than ‘The Corner that held them’ which I read on your recommendation :)
I've just finished How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education by Scott Newstok. Loved it! A short book, but full of footnotes and references to other books, so it expanded my "to-read" list quite a bit!
A NERVOUS SPLENDOR by Frederic Morton is my current and highly recommended read — a fascinating glimpse of late 19C Vienna. It’s like a group biography of Freud, Mahler, Klimt and others against the glittering brittleness of the Hapsburg Empire. And GEORGETTE HEYER’s Regency novels are my go-to for clever but light entertainment. She is underrated as a mistress of piercingly entertaining character portrayals and comedy of manners.
I absolutely love that book. A real underrated gem. I think he has another one about Vienna on the eve of the First World War that I keep meaning to read
I’ve just read ‘Mortal Secrets’ by Frank Tallis on Freud, Vienna and ‘the making of the modern mind’ which I thought fascinating and very well written (by a psychoanalyst).
It’s great isn’t it? (Also his book THE ACT OF LIVING). I am in Vienna now and in the spirit have just started VIENNA: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World by Richard Cockett and I think it is going to be another fascinating read.
Georgette Heyer is brilliant: I skidded rather successfully through an otherwise unrevised History A’Level thanks to ‘An Infamous Army’, her novel about the Battle of Waterloo
It was this book that led me to Morton’s follow-on socio-cultural history ‘Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913-1914’. From there I seem to have acquired a mini-library of books about Vienna and the Habsburg Empire under Franz Joseph I. It has resulted in a couple of visits to Vienna simply to to enjoy walks among its neo-classical, Secession and Modernist architecture in an attempt to experience the physical context of a lost era.
It’s also piqued an interest in Austrian history during the inter-war years, which is equally fascinating for the turmoil of a fragile Republic born from the Great War and the attempt by its political leaders to maintain Austrian sovereignty by keeping Hitler at arm’s length. For any reader interested a good starting point is George Clare’s ‘The Last Waltz’, a poignant family biography which recounts how as assimilated Jews (and more Austrian and patriotic than many Austrian-Germans of the period) his immediate family were decimated in the aftermath of Hitler’s 1938 Anschluss. Clare writes in beautiful prose. His anguish at the loss of family and the Viennese culture they were brought up to so strongly value and believe in (described so well by Frederic Morton in his books) will leave readers deeply saddened at the loss of a splendid era and the people who helped make it so.
Last walz is great
It has to be the 21st century. Thanks to Cataract surgery, hearing aids and my iPad, (un available in previous centuries) I can enjoy music and art from all centuries, news online, cricket rugby and golf on screen and of course James’s weekly SUBSTACK.
Depends on the perspective: 12th century renaissance for the mediaeval Man climbing out of mediaeval restrictive thought; 18th century for great architecture and paintings of stunning English countryside!
And have you read The Bookseller of Florence by Ross King.
Very sound choices. I've not even heard of The Bookseller of Florence. Good?
I loved it - my favourite recent book. It is about the last maker of vellum scrolls in the 15th century in Florence while up north the printing press is appearing so the skills and expertise of making and writing on vellum will disappear. But it’s also about the growth and dissemination of knowledge of Greek and Roman texts and people’s increasing understanding of their world as texts came across from Constantinople after 1453. The detail is exquisite and it so deepened my understanding of how and why the Renaissance developed in Italy. Loved it! Thanks for your reply!
I’ll go with the 20th, even though the first half (two World Wars, Spanish flu, the Great Depression and much much more) was unimaginably awful. But the second half was cool. I was born in 1957.
Unquestionably the 19th century for me: the consequences wrought by the Industrial Revolution, the year without summer, the revolutions of 1848, second empire France and the Franco-Prussian war, fin de siècle Europe are just a few of my obsessions, to say nothing of the art and literature. Western Civilisation, culture and empire reaching its zenith before it all inevitably comes crashing down.
Reading a Simon Mason book at the moment. I think he's a pretty sharp crime writer.
Thanks to CS Forester, Patrick O'Brian, and Georgette Heyer, I basically have an unlimited appetite for fiction set in the early 19th century. These books really unlocked my previous inability to get on with Jane Austen, and thanks either to your, or Henry Oliver's, proselytising, I'm now really enjoying Middlemarch.
I loved CS Forester when I was a kid - recall being completely entranced by (I think?) The Gun. I really need to read Patrick O'Brian as I keep seeing him recommended recently. Heretically I'm not much of a Middlemarch fan but thinking of giving George Eliot another go soon
O’brian is recommended by so many including christopher hitchens but yet he sits there on my shelf unopened:)
Aah, must have been Henry Oliver. Apologies for confusing you. Both mentally filed under "Substack Book People", maybe.
Great Econ podcast. Re the mention of Robespierre, the book to read is Ruth Scurr's biography "Fatal Purity". He is a fascinating character and this book is so well-written.
Thank you! Yes I read the Ruth Scurr book a few years ago and loved it. On a similar theme I'm currently reading Robert Darnton's book about the origins of the French Revolution, The Revolutionary Temper and really loving it
If you haven’t read A Place Of Greater Safety (but surely you have?) then grab it now now now.
Mr Bennett -- Your phrase "the book to read" made me wonder whether you were acquainted with Jacques Barzun's "From Dawn to Decadence," where that elegantly confident phrase appears regularly.
It's threads like these that makes me wish there was a way to save the comments on a post.
1) Got to try the Cat Massacre again! Gave my copy away years ago. 2) I use AI every day and all day and it is amazing and I have no doubt that the hallucination problem will never be solved. It’s not a person, its “goal” is the answer you want, not the “truth” like a person’s. 3) reading books by larry mcmurtry. Recommend so far. 4) This year I read most of the lew archer books. I would have opened them, but i had a hard to ignore recommendation. Wow. He writes like a dreamer’s dream. 5) I think the best book on the creative life might be The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather. Simply an amazing look under the hood. 6) johnson has to read in abridgment, there is a very good one where they just cut out all the letters and irrelevant speeches and it reads very smoothly and not at all like an abridgment 7) pepys on the other hand must be read in the original, but only in the latham mathews edition . I am three (of pepy’s) years in and it is great before bed reading after the kids go to sleep 8) this is after finishing (i think) 9) james Lees-Milne excellent diaries where i went after 10) jock colvill’s . But enough boring book suggestion.
I agree with you about the performance of Rossiter in Barry Lyndon. A remarkable piece of acting, so subtle and knowing.
A book I'm reading at the moment that's the best fiction so far about AI is Paul Carr's "The Confessions," and I highly recommend it. That said it's based in the present (or five minutes into the future as the saying went, or will go) and not about the 18th century.
I finished Julian Jackson’s ‘France on Trial’ today. Now moving on to Ernest Gellner’s ‘Book, Sword and Plough’ and to balance the rather dour contents, it shall be paired with a few Borges short stories.
The Great Cat Massacre is excellent, I shudder at the thought of the original version of Little Red Riding Hood. I picked it up when looking for books similar to ‘The Cheese and the Worms’ which remains the classic micro history. An Instance of the Fingerpost is also astoundingly good at conveying how alien the past was. As a historical novel I found it much better than ‘The Corner that held them’ which I read on your recommendation :)
Can I say the century with Robin Hood in it? I would lend a hand to defeat the robber barons and stop them from claiming to 'own' land.
Plus, who doesn't want to frolic around the woods and eat barbecues all day long?
Two words: Aphra
Behn
I've just finished How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education by Scott Newstok. Loved it! A short book, but full of footnotes and references to other books, so it expanded my "to-read" list quite a bit!