One of the great frustrations of my life is trying to convince people the history of land use planning is a topic of great interest. I’m told I make it sound wilfully boring; that no one wants to hear about Robert Hooke’s regulatory reforms or the origins of the Plumbing Code. By contrast, it’s comparatively… Continue reading American Pentimento by Patricia Seed
Tag: History
The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff
The first book I read last year was Rosemary Sutcliff’s Sword at Sunset. From there, I went through the full Eagle of the Ninth and ended with the King Arthur Trilogy. I read a lot of great books last year, and books aimed for my own age group, but rediscovering Sutcliff’s historical fiction was a… Continue reading The King Arthur Trilogy by Rosemary Sutcliff
Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Last year my esteemed publisher, John Hunter, recommended Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian. In return, I’ve so far failed to produce a second book and most of my writing is now absorbed into the thrills and spills of local government. Hadrian was, of course, one of the great emperors of Ancient Rome. Today’s he’s most… Continue reading Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar
Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt
I read Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem right before I stared working in the fast paced world of local government and her analysis of institutionalization was pretty terrifying. There’s a great interview with her here, opening with a particularly stupid question about whether it’s possible to be both a woman and a philosopher. In Between Past… Continue reading Between Past and Future by Hannah Arendt
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
Last year I set myself two goals for the year. To only read books by women, more on which here. To blog about each one. The first was a great success, and the latter an abysmal failure. One of the unexpected oddities of my year of gendered reading was a surprisingly large volume of histories… Continue reading SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
‘The Victorian City’ by Judith Flanders, ‘Georgian London’ by Lucy Inglis and ‘Culture Class’ by Martha Rosler
In my ongoing quest to understand the origins of planning law, I’ve been reading a lot of histories of London. That, after all, is where most of our town planning systems come from. Particularly I’ve just finished Lucy Inglis’ Georgian London: Into the Streets and Judith Flanders’ The Victorian City: Every Day Life In Dickens’… Continue reading ‘The Victorian City’ by Judith Flanders, ‘Georgian London’ by Lucy Inglis and ‘Culture Class’ by Martha Rosler