A treat for rabid Anglophiles with a taste for the offbeat and off-the-beaten-path.
Highly entertaining tour of British civilization, viewed from below ground level.
Smith (The Land of Miracles, 1998) traces British history via London’s subterranean passages, tunnels, sewers, wartime bunkers and, of course, the celebrated Underground. His erudite and eccentric odyssey mixes well-documented history with rather fanciful lore. Admittedly, the lore is more fun, such as the notion that Queen Boudicca is entombed beneath Platform 10 at the King’s Cross tube station. But much of the history is remarkably engaging because it is all too human: Henry VIII farcically shuttling lovers through his underground passages at Hampton Court; soggy gunpowder foiling poor Guy Fawkes’s disastrous attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament; grumpy Samuel Pepys clomping into his cellar to discover it’s flooded once again; underground air-raid shelters being turned into post-WWII housing for Jamaican immigrants, etc. Smith has a knack for finding the most interesting and entertaining people below street level, ranging from a legendary sewer worker who killed rats with a swat of his hardhat to a group of naive Lancashire teenagers unable to disguise their giddiness while riding the Underground for the first time. Occasionally, the below-ground treasures have a bizarre way of unexpectedly surfacing; the Nazi strikes of 1941, for example, unearthed the ruins of a Roman temple dedicated to Mithras. Sometimes Smith is a bit too generous in sharing information, as with his in-depth descriptions of the woefully fetid conditions that forced Henry III to install a drainage system at Westminster Palace in the 1380s. The future of London is also very much below street level, with long-planned rail tunnels finally getting off the drawing board as a means of attracting the 2012 Olympic Games. Not unlike the city above it, underground London remains in constant flux.
A treat for rabid Anglophiles with a taste for the offbeat and off-the-beaten-path.Pub Date: June 15, 2005
ISBN: 0-316-86134-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2005
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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