Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. Very slight tan to page edges due to age. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Writers riters and artists tourists and travellers have been attracted like migrating birds to the islands and shores of the Mediterranean. Some never return. Lawrence Durrell has lived there for the best part of his life. Its climate and natural beauty make it the ideal setting for indolent enjoyment – the land of the lotus- eater its cities and monuments stir the imagination- the cradle of Western civilization. Durrell celebrates both aspects in his novels and travel books. His writing is inseparable from its romantic landscapes cults and mysteries its famed buildings. He writes of Provence his present home ‘The place engulfs one and its habits and superstitions make one feel the pagan roots of the marvellous inland sea which colours our lives.” Paul Hogarth knows his Mediterranean too; since the Sixties he has had a house in the verdant hills of Majorca. In his water-colours he vividly evokes the settings of Durrell’s novels – the Nile delta and encompassing desert of THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET the Acropolis and the Golden Horn of THE REVOLT OF APHRODITE the Roman and Mediaeval backdrop for THE AVIGNON QUINTET. The one departure from the Mediterranean setting is Switzerland but even here the clinical calm of its lakes and mountains is linked to the more turbulent Sea by the umbilical cord of the Rh?ne. Durrell’s interplay between reality and fiction is matched by the disciplined freedom of Hogarth’s paintings. Both have an amused and watchful eye for the unusual and bizarre. (MP)