MIRLI BOOKS
  • Home
  • Books
    • Henry's Trials >
      • Extract from Henry's Trials
    • Smethurst's Luck >
      • Extract from Smethurst's Luck
    • Murder in the Red Barn >
      • Extract from Murder in the Red Barn
    • Reverend Duke and the Amesbury Oliver
  • Talks
    • Talk on Henry's Trials
    • Talk on Smethurst's Luck
    • Talk on Isambard Kingdom Brunel
    • Talk on the Murder in the Red Barn
    • BBC
  • Publications
    • The Amesbury Union Workhouse
    • The Separate System
  • Peter Maggs
  • Shop
  • Blog
  • Family History
    • Mirli
    • BM Creeper >
      • The Significance of Stonehenge
      • Educating Ealing I: How Lady Byron Did It
      • Educating Ealing II: Church of England Primary in the 1920s
      • All Because of Crystal Palace
      • Innocent in Ealing - Extract
      • Miss McDonald

Wagner and Game of Thrones

30/3/2015

0 Comments

 
I have a feeling that Wagner would have appreciated Game of Thrones. I’m listening to Götterdämmerung, The Twilight of the Gods… It strikes me that there are very many parallels, and I’m sure that RW would have appreciated the sex and violence in the TV series.

The Ring has all of that in abundance, along with treachery, murder, incest, dwarves, giants, dragons and plenty of swordplay. Yes, the parallels are extraordinary…

0 Comments

Spectacular convenience...

30/3/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
A splendid Parker-Seal Launching Dinner arranged by Chris Neale at the Royal Norfolk and Suffolk Yacht Club premises on Saturday night; the RNSYC is a marvellous oasis of anachronistic wonder right in the middle of Lowestoft.

And it is impossible not to record the excellent men’s urinal in that establishment. A truly spectacular example of late Victorian/Edwardian sanitary engineering.

The copper cistern has the Prince of Wales’ feathers etched over the legend “Fata huius Patriae in Vestris Manibus Est”, which translates as: “The fate of the country is in your hands…” If this was ‘aimed’ at the Prince of Wales of the period – who was to become Edward VII – then who can say that it was not apposite…



0 Comments

Spring?

22/3/2015

0 Comments

 
The spring equinox and with it the first day of spring came early this year, coinciding with the eclipse of the sun last Friday. Not that anyone where I was (Southwold) might have been aware of either event; the heavily overcast morning gloom was barely reduced during the eclipse maximum, and the weather demanded anyone venturing outside to don coat, hat, scarf and gloves. Naturally of course the sun came out at midday, just as the eclipse ended…

0 Comments

Maria Martin

15/3/2015

0 Comments

 
I have added a new page, Maria Martin, to this website. Currently, it contains the introduction to my new book. For time to time I will add snippets from the book to whet the appetite of anyone interested.
0 Comments

Something to Bragg about... 

12/3/2015

1 Comment

 
What a national treasure is Melvyn Bragg. A true Renaissance man who cheerfully rejects C P Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’ and embraces with enthusiasm science and engineering as well as the arts in his In Our Time series on the radio.

Looking through the programmes I have downloaded, I find subjects as diverse as The Celts, Relativity, The Diet of Worms, The Industrial Revolution, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Dissolution of the Monasteries, Photosynthesis, The Great Reform Act and so on.

Bragg has written many novels and non-fiction, including an excellent book on the English language, The Adventure of English. I also find that he wrote the script for Ken Russell’s wonderful film on Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers. Melvyn famously fronted the avant-garde arts programme The South-Bank Show for a number of years. I’ll admit to being a little nonplussed to discover that, according to Wikipedia, he is a friend of Tony Blair, but then no-one is perfect…

What I really like about our Melvyn, apart from his gentle adenoidal Geordie accent, is the fact that as an intellectual he treats science and the arts on an equal footing. I remember hearing Robert Robinson, Laurie Taylor and others on Robinson's radio programme Stop the Week, pompously chortling with amusement about how some fairly straightforward detail of science was completely inexplicable to them. How contemptuous they would have been of a scientist who made the same comment about some aspect of literature or the arts. Not so Melvyn; and he scores one better over some of the very good science programmes on BBC TV, in that he gets real scientists, not ‘good’ presenters to put over the explanations. These don’t always work but when they do, like today’s programme on Dark Matter, they really are more than excellent.

1 Comment

Clarkson

11/3/2015

0 Comments

 
I tried to sign the petition to reinstate Clarkson, but the website wouldn’t accept my email address – adolf@hitler.com...

Having said that, I do actually quite like Jeremy Clarkson; he is an amusing, witty and well-informed journalist, but he is a terminal yobbo. It will be interesting to see how the BBC wrestle with the potential drop in revenue for their Top Gear programme vs the principle of last-chance Jeremy…

Still, anyone capable of such an intelligent take on Isambard Kingdom Brunel, as Clarkson did for the Greatest Britons programme, really can’t be all bad.
0 Comments

My guilty secret...

10/3/2015

0 Comments

 
I have a very guilty secret: I really love Game of Thrones. For anyone not familiar with it, it is quite definitely post-watershed viewing. The standard menu is full-frontal nudity, Anglo-Saxon epithets, simulated sex and lots of very bloody violence. It is set in a mythical, fantasy land, but with the exception of a few dragons and the occasional witch, it is not ‘supernatural’.

Why am I attracted to a Hollywood ‘swords and sex’ epic? Well, I find that the story and the script are surprisingly intelligent, and for an American production there is not an American accent to be heard. It is a positive showcase for British actors, mainly with north-country accents, and although there are American actors, their accents are carefully disguised.

The special effects are quite stunning, the visualization of the various city-states is very compelling and the direction is such that as each episode ends, I really want to know what comes next…

Is the sex and violence gratuitous? Unquestionably. Does it treat women poorly with endless scenes in brothels? Yes it does, and there’s little justification for that, except to say that several of the strongest characters are women, and they punch well above their weight.

Well, I’m not entirely proud to admit it, but I find Game of Thrones compulsive watching.

0 Comments

    Author

    Welcome to the Mirli Books blog written by Peter Maggs

    Archives

    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Website and Contents © Peter Maggs 2023
  • Home
  • Books
    • Henry's Trials >
      • Extract from Henry's Trials
    • Smethurst's Luck >
      • Extract from Smethurst's Luck
    • Murder in the Red Barn >
      • Extract from Murder in the Red Barn
    • Reverend Duke and the Amesbury Oliver
  • Talks
    • Talk on Henry's Trials
    • Talk on Smethurst's Luck
    • Talk on Isambard Kingdom Brunel
    • Talk on the Murder in the Red Barn
    • BBC
  • Publications
    • The Amesbury Union Workhouse
    • The Separate System
  • Peter Maggs
  • Shop
  • Blog
  • Family History
    • Mirli
    • BM Creeper >
      • The Significance of Stonehenge
      • Educating Ealing I: How Lady Byron Did It
      • Educating Ealing II: Church of England Primary in the 1920s
      • All Because of Crystal Palace
      • Innocent in Ealing - Extract
      • Miss McDonald