The Debatable Land
No gods and precious few heroes: transatlantic dispatches from Alex Massie
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March 02, 2008
New look for 2008!
Thought I'd try out a new look; let me know what you think. Good? Bad? Better? Worse?
2 Mar 2008 02:39:33
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Another Lost World
I'm not sure they make publishers like this anymore. Alas. As is so often the case we may count on the Daily Telegraph's exquisite obituaries page to provide the details. Sic transit gloria mundi and all the rest of it. Anthony Blond, who has died aged 79, was a gentleman publisher from an age when business was conducted in dusty garrets and promising authors were given small retainers to allow them to find their muse. Charismatic, daring and outrageous, Blond collected talents as diverse as Harold Robbins and Jean Genet, Spike Milligan and Graham Greene. He was the first to spot the potential of Jennifer Paterson (of the Two Fat Ladies), and was an early director of Private Eye, of whose bank account he was a guarantor. Of the 70 or so writers to whom Blond gave their first chance, he became most closely associated with Simon Raven, whose books he published throughout his literary career. Raven's daring first novel The Feathers of Death (1959), about a homosexual affair in the Army, was one of Blond's early successes. It was Blond, too, who recognised and helped to curb the self-destructive streak that threatened to finish Raven's career almost before it...
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The A Team
It's late on a fiercely cold evening with the rain lashing and the wind howling down the Yarrow valley. Obviously, then, it's time for an exciting new Debatable Land series! Readers possessing elephantine memories may recall this post in which I confessed - nay, revelled! - in being a cricket geek. I'm not alone in this. Like a good number of other sensitive souls I often spend idle moments (of which, blessedly, there are many) selecting imaginary cricket XIs. Thus one can spend hours pondering the greatest West Indies XI of time or the finest selection of left-handed cricketers or, well, you get the idea. An old and favourite variety of this parlour game is to choose sides whose players all share a surname that begins with the same letter. Some members of the alphabet are weaker than others. We shall have to wait for the great Chinese cricketing revolution before the X's are competitive, for instance. Still, a start must be made. And where better than at the beginning of the alphabet? A it is then. This is, in my opinion, the strongest A team available to be selected from the ranks of cricketers who have played at least...
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It looks OK but I preferred the other. To me, this one looks far too plain, spartan, and formulaic. Just my opinion, don't mean to be harsh about it, but you asked ...
Posted by: RW Rogers | March 02, 2008 at 05:04 AM
Looks the same to me. Then again, I'm drunk.
Posted by: Mr Eugenides | March 02, 2008 at 09:18 AM
You look like Matt Drudge in that pic. *lmao* Sorry just had to point that out. I know how much you like Matt.
Posted by: Mark | March 02, 2008 at 09:36 AM
"Thought I'd try out a new look" - what, without the old look being so worn out that it's fit only for gardening? Getting in touch with your feminine side?
Posted by: dearieme | March 02, 2008 at 09:40 AM
I prefered the other look, and I am not drunk.
Posted by: Tyrone Slothrop | March 03, 2008 at 10:57 PM
I found your blog through google and I'm a new Bonsai enthusiast. I read your article and found it quite opinionated and will be favoriting your site, and referring my friends to it too.
Posted by: BuyBonsaiGal | January 26, 2011 at 04:21 PM