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A review of My Chess by Hans Ree

One sentence struck me.  He writes of Euwe that, despite his solid establishment status, he preferred to mingle with bohemians rather than ‘respectable plodders’.  It struck me because that’s a strand or a subtext running through many of the essays: in the Netherlands, uniquely perhaps, chess is an arena where the bourgeois and bohemian worlds meet.

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A review of The Flash Gordon Serials, 1936-1940 A Heavily Illustrated Guide By Roy Kinnard

The Flash Gordon Serials, 1936-1940Flash Gordon rocketed onto the movie screen in 1936, in a serial of the same name which ran for 13 episodes. He appeared in two further movie serials – a now defunct format, killed off by television – in Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (1938) and Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940), the latter title indicative perhaps of America’s new-found confidence as an emerging superpower.  Most of us who went to Saturday Matinees as a child, to a Rialto or a local Odeon, will have seen some of these episodes, along with (say) a Laurel and Hardy short, a Disney film or a George Formby feature. 

A review of Five Plays by Anton Chekhov translated by Marina Brodskaya

Five Plays by Chekhov What can one fruitfully add to the title, a title which accurately and ably, without undue fuss or bother, describes the book’s contents? Well, first one can expand upon it slightly.  The plays in question areIvanovThe SeagullUncle VanyaThree Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.  So, all are what one can call Chekhov’s mature theatrical works.

A review of Hartmann Schedel. Chronicle of the World – 1493 edited and annotated by Stephan Fussel

Hartmann Schedel.  Chronicle of the World – 1493his is a beautifully produced facsimile of the German edition (it was apparently published in Latin at the time as well) of what has come to be known as the Nuremberg Chronicle. The book sets out to tell the history of the world through seven ages, though the seventh is best described as the age to come, when we can look forward to the coming of the Antichrist, Armageddon and the Last Judgement.  Seems crazy to most o us, but these were all very real prospects for Hartmann Schedel and his contemporaries. 

Modern Femininity and Force: Alice Smith, She

The notes are long, romantic in a well-paced song about new love, “The One.”  It can fit into the rhythm-and-blues ballad tradition without being predictable in lyric or sound.  Feminine, intelligently shrewd, and observant tones are in “Shot,” a song of unexpected love.  “Shot” uses a rumbling big beat, undergirding the softly inflected voice (and chanting chorus): in the song, shallow lovers are surprised by genuine emotion.  The lyric descriptions are increasingly recited with a certain discernible power.

Tradition Honored and Refreshed: Cecile McLorin Salvant, WomanChild

Great things are expected of Cecile McLorin Salvant, a singer and songwriter, and the winner of the Thelonious Monk Jazz Competition; and on WomanChild, accompanied by pianist Aaron Diehl, drummer Herlin Riley, bassist Rodney Whitaker, and guitarist James Chirillo, Cecile McLorin Salvant has begun to prove that faith deserved.