Search results for ""Author Kevin Jackson""

Discover one of Europe's most historic cities through 30 dramatic true stories spanning 2,000 years of British history. From the bloody rebellion of Boudica to the modern monarchy, and from Shakespeare to the Sex Pistols, Kevin Jackson leads 9 walking tours following in the footsteps of William the Conqueror, Anne Boleyn, Guy Fawkes, Queen Elizabeth and the other leaders, dreamers and schemers who shaped the England's capital. The fifth title in Museyon's acclaimed "Chronicles" series, 'Chronicles of Old London: Exploring England's Historic Capital' is enjoyable for history buffs, Londoners and London tourists alike. It includes: . 30 meticulously researched stories including dramatic episodes from the lives of Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Winston Churchill, The Beatles and many, many, more . 8 walking tours visiting major landmarks and historical sites including Buckingham Palace, Westminster Alley, Piccadilly Circus, King's Road and the London Eye . Famous (and infamous) tales of the gruesome martyrdom of Thomas Beckett, Black Plague, the Tower of London and the murderous streak of Jack the Ripper . 450 + photographs and illustrations of London past and present . 20 detailed maps AUTHOR: Kevin Jackson compiled The Oxford Book of Money, wrote Invisible Forms, A Guide to Literary Curiosities, a book on the Great Pyramid, a number of books on the cinema, one on the moose, another on vampires and yet another on fast food in Britain. He was associate arts editor of the Independent, one of the big British daily papers, and film critic for the Independent on Sunday. REVIEW: Another in Museyon's "Chronicles" series (Chronicles of Old New York), in this book London writer Jackson provides 30 stories of the city, starting with Boudicca's revolt around 60 C.E. and ending with Prince William's marriage in the present day. These vignettes cover a variety of historical and cultural figures from the Sex Pistols to Bloody Mary. In addition to the historical sketches, the volume presents nine walking tours with maps, photographs, and descriptions of sights along the way. Photographs and illustrations are numerous (over 450) and provide a visual backdrop that further highlights the content. There are no listings of places to stay or information on museum hours; this title is best as a supplement to a traditional guide. The numerous detailed neighborhood maps in the walking tours section will be especially useful. Verdict : A helpful and pleasant read for travelers looking for historical background and a few walking tours for a London trip. Interesting and fun to read, the book mixes light history with contemporary details.-Louise Feldmann, Colorado State Univ. Libs., Fort Collins 450 photographs MUSEYON GUIDES CHRONICLES SERIES 9780984633449 Chronicles of Old Rome: Exploring Italy's Eternal City 9780984633401 Chronicles of Old Boston: Exploring New England's Historic Capital 9780984633487 Chronicles of Old Chicago: Exploring the History and Lore of the Windy City 9780984633418 Chronicles of Old Las Vegas: Exposing Sin City's High-Stakes History 9780984633432 Chronicles of Old London: Exploring Historic Neighborhoods 9780982232064 Chronicles of Old New York: Exploring Manhatten's Landmark Neighbors 9780984633425 Chronicles of Old Paris: Exploring the Historic City of Light

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Arm yourself with garlic, stake and crucifix, for the vampires are back in force - at the top of the best-seller lists, on your TV, on the web and lurking in darkened cinemas. But where did they come from?Why have they come back now? And how can you tell if you are one? Beginning with the first sightings of bats and blood-sucking in the Romantic period, Bite follows the undead's progress through the ages, right up to the present. Alongside mini-essays, anecdotes, facts and figures, each section will be punctuated with lists, such as the best places around the world for vamp tourism; rock songs with vampire allusions; box-office revenue for vamp movies; the Top 10 Vampire clubs, video-games, vampire brides, as well as reliable and unreliable methods of killing a vampire ...

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Released to a muted reception in 1987, Withnail& I has since become one of Britain's best-known cult classics. Jackson analyses the mood and magic of the film, its aesthetics and sensibility, seeking to show, without ever detracting from the film's comic brilliance, how much more there is to Withnail& I than drunkenness and swearing.

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In Letters of Introduction Kevin Jackson invents a new genre, the Alphabet Essay. Always inventive, scholarly and sometimes zany, Jackson approaches ten writers and two 'themes', building an alphabet around each: 'A is for' to 'Z is for'. The alphabet touches on his subjects' history, their culture, their private and intimate lives, their anxieties, and most importantly their achievement. The Alphabets are introductory and exploratory. Jackson picks his way through the worlds of Hildegard of Bingen, William Blake, Dante, Duke Ellington, Freud, Goethe, the Harlem Renaissance, Paul Klee, Friedrich Nietzsche, Surrealism, Andy Warhol and Marguerite Yourcenar. As he goes he finds out more and more, by association, through legend and gossip, in imagination. It is a wonderful process, an approach which imposes wonderful juxtapositions and elicits delicious ironies. The form is redolent of childhood, the content is remote from childish things.

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Kevin Jackson's versions (rather than literal translations) of the sonnet sequence written in exile between 1824 and 1829 by Poland's greatest poet, Adam Mickiewicz, are both urgent and memorable. The originals are poems of intense patriotism and nostalgia; Jackson's versions capture this and much more, including what he terms in his new companion essay, 'Mickiewicz's aching sense of loneliness and loss'. Jackson wrote in his introduction to Anthony Burgess's 'Revolutionary Sonnets' that 'pleasures both demotic and recondite abound in the pages': the same might be applied to this striking sequence. In the spirit of Robert Lowell's 'Imitations' he deliberately plays fast and loose with the literal sense of the poems, memorably revivifying diction and tone. In so doing, he shows himself to be an unassuming and masterful guide and host to Mickiewicz's original works.

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F.W. Murnau's 1922 Nosferatu, the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, starring Max Schreck as the hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire, remains a potent and disturbing horror film. Kevin Jackson's study traces Nosferatu's eventful production and reception history, including attempts by Stoker's widow to suppress it.

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Ruskin is one of the most influential and exhilarating writers in English. Art critic, architectural visionary, social reformer, climate warner and incomparable teacher; Ruskin's words not only transformed Victorian England but speak to us with increasing urgency today. This, the first general introduction to Ruskin for many years, places him in the social, economic and aesthetic world of Victorian Britain that he transformed - and shows how this transformation has much to teach us today. The extensive illustrations range from private notes and lecture diagrams to presentation drawings, including some of the most beautiful images of the 19th century and many never before published. Published in association with the Ruskin Foundation.

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Withnail and I sank almost without a trace when it was first released in 1987. Financed by HandMade Films, the late George Harrison’s production company, and drawing heavily on first-time writer-director Bruce Robinson's experiences, this virtually plot-free story follows two out-of-work actors (Withnail, played by Richard E. Grant, and 'I', played by Paul McGann), eking out a living in a run-down London of the late 1960s, and embarking on a booze-fuelled weekend in the country which takes various unexpected turns. Although it initially failed to find an audience, it did not take long for the film to attract a dedicated cult following which still persists today. Lines from the film such as 'we've gone on holiday by mistake!' and 'Bring me the finest wines known to humanity!' have become popular favourites and the subject of countless internet memes. Kevin Jackson's in-depth study gives a full account of the film's origins and production history. But his main focus is the mood and magic of the film, its aesthetics and sensibility, seeking to show, without ever detracting from the film's comic brilliance, just how much more there is to Withnail and I than drunkenness and swearing. 'It is an outstandingly touching yet witheringly unsentimental drama of male friendship,' Jackson writes, 'a bleak up-ending of the English pastoral dream, a piece of ferocious verbal inventiveness' - and, without question, one of the greatest of all British films. In his new foreword to this edition, writer Bharat Tandon pays tribute to to both Withnail's peculiar genius and enduring appeal, and to his close friend Kevin Jackson.

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Lawrence of Arabia is widely considered one of the ten greatest films ever made - though more often by film-goers and film-makers than by critics. This monograph argues that popular wisdom is correct, and that Lean's film is a unique blend of visionary image-making, narrative power, mythopoetic charm and psychological acuteness.

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On Easter, 2014, Britain's best-loved vicar, the Rev. Richard Coles, led a pilgrimage to all the major historic sites of the Holy Land: from Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North, via Jericho and the Jordan River, to Bethlehem and, finally, Jerusalem. All of the pilgrims in his care were practising Christians, except one: the writer Kevin Jackson, a diffident and sympathetic atheist intrigued by the chance to take part in this modern-day version of an ancient act of piety, and to learn some more about his old friend, the media clergyman. Coles to Jerusalem is Kevin Jackson's light-hearted diary of that pilgrimage, and a close-up portrait of Richard Coles both as priest and as man. As the journey proceeds, Coles reminisces at length about his past life as a rock star and radical gay agitator, his new life as a spiritual leader and a popular broadcaster on BBC radio and television, and the strange, unpredictable path that led him from self-destructive debauchery to faith and vocation. With a lively supporting cast of fellow pilgrims, Coles to Jerusalem ranges among the magnificence of ancient monuments and the banalities of the guided tour, the grim political background of contemporary Israel and the comedy of a group of idiosyncratic English folk abroad, the intensity of worship and the lightness of banter. It will be irresistible to all admirers of Richard Coles, who has contributed a foreword; and a revelation to those who have never encountered his wisdom and warmth.

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Schrader on Schrader is an essential set of dialogues with one of the most genuinely fascinating and uncompromising writer-directors in American film.Raised as a Calvinist and hence forbidden to partake of 'worldly pleasures' such as movies, Paul Schrader nevertheless defied his upbringing to become first a leading film critic, then a star pupil among the US 'movie brat' generation of the 1970s: writing the coruscating screenplays for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull and directing such provocative pictures as Blue Collar, Hardcore and American Gigolo. Maturity has never sated his appetite for attacking 'difficult' material, from adapting Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation for Scorsese, to filming the singular lives of Mishima and Patty Hearst.Schrader on Schrader is a tour through this formidable body of work, including some of Schrader's finest critical essays.

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Greta Garbo, the immortal goddess of the silver screen, said that she wanted to be alone. What if she had been granted that wish? What if she had travelled further and further until she arrived at the North Pole? And what if she met a faithful dog along the way...

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Cult experimental novel from the late William Hayward first published by Heinemann in 1964.Follows the progress of Bran Lynch, Irish ex-poet, and a group of refugees from employment. Shows influences of the Beats and modernists such as James Joyce: 'a raucous combustion of jazz, sex and cider.'

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