Pluvialis has been in the Gulf where she saw this huge version of Thesiger’s portrait of Sheikh Zayed. She has two book contracts, one for the Gos book. More soon I hope.
Tag: Writing
Illustrations
The kind of things I might use in the book of 100. Covers are obvious, and will obviously be the majority, but here are a few other ideas. From the top: a couple of “twofers”; a letter from Angus Cameron to Jack O’Connor, both in it, on Jack’s New Yorker review (for the Rifle Book!), …
An Accidental Cowboy, Barking Backward
I have always found people with multiple passions more interesting than single- subject obsessives. I first became aware of Jameson Parker… well, a LONG time ago, when he starred in our generation’s finest California TV mystery series Simon and Simon, playing the preppier younger brother and partner in a PI business to Gerald McRaney’s Marine …
Link: PLF
We have a good link at the Patrick Leigh Fermor blog, on Geoffrey Household. Follow it to more details on the letter below and more…
Hazards of Grace
My falconry apprentice, Gary Moody of Santa Fe, (also Texas, Siberia not far north of Olgii, St John’s) has published his first book of poetry, at… let us say, my age. It is NOT an apprentice work; rather, the work of a seasoned poet who hadn’t published a book yet. My blurb gives a hint: …
Christopher Hitchens 1949- 2011 RIP
Damn but we are losing some good ones. I hardly always agreed with “Hitch” (who could?) but AM inclined to agree with Jonathan Hanson: “The collective IQ of the planet just dropped noticeably.” Update: hunter, man of letters, and Catholic Tom McIntyre is another not uncritical admirer. He writes: “According to NPR, Hitch’s most important …
A very strange word list
This may only interest writers and other word- mad wretches.. But I recently unearthed a 1940 postcard of the Tokyo Olympiad (?) written on but never sent by Virginia Huntington, Betsy’s mother and the bishop’s wife.We NEVER made any sense of it- creative interpretations encouraged. (She was also a rather awful, but published, poet, if …
Boothroyd
Here is the 1987 (see ref to Betsy’s death) letter from “James Bond’s Armourer” praising the Model 12 that I promised last night– click to enlarge, twice if needed. Also notice that handguns were still legal in England then…
Returning to Bloggage: More Gun Stuff
More photo- blogging than not… I always write about double guns but you could make an argument that the most useful shotgun I have is my 20- bore Winchester model 12– even the likes of Geoffrey Boothroyd, who Ian Fleming wrote into the James Bond books as Bond’s “armourer”, owned one, along with one of …
Gopnik on Dogs
Adam Gopnik’s piece “Dog Story” in the New Yorker for 11 August (available online only for subscribers I think) is full of nuggets, observations, and pointers to good books including Derr’s forthcoming one which should be essential. Meanwhile there are good “detachable quotes”: “She does a better impersonation of a person than we do as …