Booknotes 04-01-2007

A round up of the week's book news 

On Retreat

 

The first major Irish book of 2007 is a very handsome achievement. Annaghmakerrig is an overwhelmingly impressive history of the varied work to come from this famous artistic retreat. Located in the tranquil countryside of Co Monaghan, Annaghmakerrig was graciously left to the Irish state by Sir William Tyrone Guthrie in 1971. Over the last 25 years it has played host and nutured the talent of almost every single creative genius working in this country, from novelists to poets to painters to playwrights. As a writer of sorts, Book Notes knows that finding your voice depends on having a sanctuary to which you can escape the pettiness, chaos and other distractions of life. Those who have spent time at Annaghmakerrig have had the privilege of staying in a house that may as well have been built for this purpose. In return many of Annamakerrig's former residents have contributed pieces to this fabulously rich and beautifully illustrated book. What the Lilliput Press have done is put together a glorious celebration of this nation's unique imagination. Anyone who wants to know what has been happening in the arts in Ireland in the last quarter of a century needs this book.

 

The Kings of Nonsense

 

Book Notes must confess to having a rather curious attitude to the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. After hating them with a passion for many years, Book Notes then experienced a change of heart, mostly inspired by Topsy-Turvey, Mike Leigh's splendid 1999 film about the lyricist and composer's celebrated partnership. The conclusion Book Notes has reached is that it is not so much Gilbert and Sullivan's music, with its toe-curling puns and guffaw-inducing rhymes, that appeals but the time in which it was created. Their music conjours up a gas-lit world gorged on the spoils of empire, a world of hansom cabs, snuff-taking, ivory tower gentleman's clubs and ill-concealed insanity. Of late the opinion of music critics has also changed, with many now believing that much intelligent invention lay behind the apparent nonsense of Gilbert and Sullivan. This re-evaluation has led to the publication of The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan, an edition of their Savoy Opera librettos. As well as containing all the great comic operas, including HMS Pinafore, Patience and The Mikado in their entirity, this volume also contains an exhaustive set of notes which examine in detail how each was created. From satire to silliness, The Complete Gilbert and Sullivan should enchant all fans of the duo.

 

Time out of Mind

 

The Middle Ages was not known for being a particularly enlightened period of human history. Instead of mankind basking in the light of God, the impression most have of this age is that people were more concerned with drinking, pillaging and finding big sticks to beat each other with. Hard to imagine such a time of ignorance and boorishness, isn't it? This long-standing view is disputed by the historian Eamon Duffy, whose painstaking research has led him to give a new interpretation of the Middle Age mind in his book Marking the Hours: The English People and their Prayers, 1240-1570.Just as today no high-flyer could be without their little black book, so people in the Middle Ages were dependent on a Book of Hours to give order to their lives. These contained a calendar and list of prayers and psalms, all that clean-living worshippers required for their unblemished souls to ascend to heaven. On the spare pages of Books of Hours, Duffy has found a horde of historical information. Aside from lists of debts and hastily-jotted tavern bills, Duffy has discovered what it was like for people to imagine the eternal light of God and how they maintained a loving relationship with him in those dark days of the past.k

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