Search results for ""Author Harry Mount""

Founded in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, The Oldie is an irreverent magazine for the independent-minded. The Oldie Annual will feature more articles and cartoons from ‘the most original magazine in the country’ (Independent) This is the best of The Oldie’s writers, columnists, cartoonists and artists from the archive in one book.

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Founded in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, The Oldie is an irreverent magazine for the independent-minded “The Oldie is an incredible magazine - perhaps the best magazine inthe world.” Graydon Carter, former editor of Vanity Fair This is the best of The Oldie’s writers, columnists, cartoonists and artists from the archive in one book

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"If you know someone who missed out on Latin at school and wants to live a happier life, you could do no better than give them Harry Mount's entertainingly educative Latin primer." Daily Mail"Amo, Amas, Amat is a diverting meander and Mount's love of Latin shines out on every page." The Spectator"Latin without the pain." Guardian"If you studied Latin at school this will bring back fond memories, but even newcomers will be captivated by this witty and entertaining book..." Yorkshire Evening PostHave you ever found yourself irritated when a sine qua non or a mea culpa is thrown into the conversation by a particularly annoying person? Or do distant memories of afternoons spent struggling to learn obscure verbs fill you with dread? Never fear! Or, as a Latin show-off might say, Nil desperandum!Those endless afternoons where you struggled to remember the third person singular present indicative of volo (vult) may be a long time ago. But, if you have the vaguest memory of the ablative absolute, the locative and the gerund, you mastery of Latin will spring back to life with Amo, amas, amat...and all that. In his trip through the world's most influential language, Harry Mount uncorks its magic, drawing on Latin lovers from Kingsley Amis to John Cleese, from Evelyn Waugh to Donna Tart. Read this book and you will know Latin. Know Latin and - mirabile dictu - you will know Wilfred Owen's misery, Catullus's aching heart and the comedy of a thousand bachelor schoolmasters.

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A brilliant, offbeat celebration of the great hodgepodge of British buildings' Thomas Marks, Sunday TelegraphFrom soaring Victorian railway stations to Edwardian terraces, from Perpendicular churches to Strawberry Hill, Britain has an architecture unrivalled in fertility, invention and heart-stopping beauty. And with some very strong feelings about window sills, Harry Mount could not be better qualified to survey it. Meandering through garden suburbs and cathedral closes, discovering Moghul palaces in Gloucestershire and Egyptian sphinxes in Islington, A Lust for Window Sills is rich with anecdote, allusion and such inspired digressions as where to find the ugliest gargoyles and a liquid history of watering holes from gin palaces to the Rovers Return.

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The Oldie Annual will feature more articles and cartoons from `the most original magazine in the country’ (Independent) This is the best of The Oldie’s writers, columnists, cartoonists and artists from the archive in one book Writers include Auberon Waugh, Miles Kington, Giles Wood, Patricia Highsmith and Barry Cryer

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Founded in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, The Oldie is an irreverent magazine for the independent-minded The Oldie Annual will feature more articles and cartoons from `the most original magazine in the country’ (Independent) This is the best of The Oldie’s writers, columnists, cartoonists and artists from the archive in one book

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Harry Mount's How England Made the English: From Why We Drive on the Left to Why We Don't Talk to Our Neighbours is packed with astonishing facts and wonderful stories.Q. Why are English train seats so narrow?A. It's all the Romans' fault. The first Victorian trains were built to the same width as horse-drawn wagons; and they were designed to fit the ruts left in the roads by Roman chariots. For readers of Paxman's The English, Bryson's Notes on a Small Island and Fox's Watching the English, this intriguing and witty book explains how our national characteristics - our sense of humour, our hobbies, our favourite foods and our behaviour with the opposite sex - are all defined by our nation's extraordinary geography, geology, climate and weather.You will learn how we would be as freezing cold as Siberia without the Gulf Stream; why we drive on the left-hand side of the road; why the Midlands became the home of the British curry. It identifies the materials that make England, too: the faint pink Aberdeen granite of kerbstones; that precise English mix of air temperature, smell and light that hits you the moment you touch down at Heathrow.Praise for Harry Mount:'Highly readable, encyclopeadic, marvellous, illuminating. Mount portrays England via dextrous excavations of its geography, geology, history and weather' Independent'Fascinating. Mount's an intelligent, funny and always interesting companion' Daily Mail'Charming and nerdily fact-stuffed' GuardianHarry Mount is the author of Amo, Amas, Amat and All That, his best-selling book on Latin, and A Lust for Window Sills - A Guide to British Buildings. A journalist for many newspapers and magazines, he has been a New York correspondent and a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph. He studied classics and history at Oxford, and architectural history at the Courtauld Institute. He lives in north London

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Harry Mount and John Davie unlock the wisdom of the past in this light-hearted and fascinating book, revealing how ancient Latin can help us to live better in the present. There are so many Latin phrases in everyday use that often we use them without understanding the background and context within which they were actually used. 'Carpe diem'; 'Stet'; 'Memento mori'; 'Et tu Brute' – examples would fill a book. And often these phrases are also used in English translation: 'The die is cast'; 'crossing the Rubicon'; 'Rome was not built in a day'. Many of these phrases are humorous, but they are also a rich source of wisdom: the wisdom of the ancients. The chapters of this book include: Latin for Gardeners, the Great Latin Love Poets, Cicero on How to Grow Old Gracefully and Seneca's Stoic Guide to Life. Each chapter starts with a quotation and is lightly sprinkled with many more, with accompanying English translations and entertaining cartoons and illustrations dotted throughout. The background to each quotation is explained so that the context is fully understood. Who crossed the Rubicon and why, for example? At a time of great political and social turbulence, more and more people are turning back to ancient wisdom as a guide to life. Here they are in touch with two classical scholars of distinction who have the common touch and can help make Latin accessible to all, not to mention fun!

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