Word: rome
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Seventeen years have passed since Churchill grimly thundered his refusal to "preside over the liquidation of the British Empire," but today the British Empire is only a few steps from a liquidation as complete as that of Rome, Spain and the Habsburgs. Taking Empire's place is that once implausible, peculiarly individualistic association of free peoples known as the Commonwealth of Nations. As Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan puts it: "Since the war, Communist Russia has absorbed at least 100 million people into her block contrary to the wishes of the inhabitants of the countries concerned. Since...
...Turkey's Kemal Pasha) and churchmen (Benedict XV, Pius XI, St. John Bosco), fashioned the new bronze doors for Allied-bombed Monte Cassino Abbey, picturing U.S. and British air forces alongside Goths and Huns as the abbey's destroyers, composed operas (Miranda, Bride of Corinth); in Rome...
...Alexis Carvers (328 pp.; McGraw-Hill; $4.50), is evidence that nothing makes more pleasant reading than a novel that is both light and serious-unless it is a love letter written with tact. Alexis Curvers' light and serious novel is a moving love letter to the city of Rome. It consists of the memoirs of Jimmy, an exquisitely cultivated Belgian bum who gets a job as a tourist guide in the Holy City and finds a few shadowy, crackpot friends. There is Sir Craven, so named for his Craven "A" cigarettes, a fop straight out of the Oscar Wilde...
...attraction of this strongly appealing book lies not so much in the plot as in the author's passion for the city. Rome, says Belgian Novelist Curvers, is "like a woman lying in a shallow bowl of marble who, leaning now on one elbow, now on the other, constantly lifts one hand toward the blue bowl of the sky." Since that hand holds offerings-the offerings of art-the book also contains more genuine insights into art than a shelf of criticism. Of the Sistine Chapel: "Poor Michelangelo-to have been put to so undignified and superhuman a task...
...always there is Rome itself, giving shape and glory to what might otherwise be a formless fantasy. When the gates of the city finally close behind Jimmy as on a condemned playground, the picaresque hero carries with him two bittersweet truths: youth is short and Rome is eternal...