The House of Borgia by Christopher Hibbert
Constable, £18.99
When Rodrigo Borgia was elected Pope in 1492, his reaction was characteristic. He leapt to his feet, shouting: “I am Pope! I am Pope!” although the result can hardly have been a surprise to him. He had bribed no fewer than 13 of the electoral cardinals, some with mule trains packed with gold, others with promises of jobs.
Oh! America, what is being done in your name? As the armies of the United States march across the world lurching from one crisis area to another in the guise of international peace keepers, it is perhaps timely to remember why the country came into being in the first place. And time, too, to ask whether the ideas and ideals of the United States of America of Barack Obama are the same as the United States of George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson et al? Well, readers of Ray Raphael’s book can draw their own conclusions because that would be a fascinating epilogue to this new history of America’s founding fathers (and a handful of mothers).
In the early 1950s Jim Downer, fresh out of Leeds College of Art, was living in the top floor flat of an architecturally interesting but dilapidated Georgian terrace house at 18 Rugby Street in Bloomsbury. There was no bathroom (he went to Holborn Public Baths), no toilet (he used the outdoor loo in the coal cellar) and no running water; he would go to a sink, with a single cold water tap, on the half-landing down the stairs. Downer recalls: “That is how I came to meet Ted Hughes. His flat, which he used when up from Cambridge and elsewhere, was on the second floor, two below my own, but the sink just above his flat was blocked and he had continued on up the stairs in search of water.”
According to the London Evening Standard, Baroness Ashton, the new European Union Representative for Foreign Affairs, is the proud owner of a full-sized Dalek. A birthday present from her husband, it is prominently displayed to greet visitors to their home. It is not known whether it reminds her of anyone in particular. However, as she [...]
It seems that the annual Turner Prize (worth a hefty £40,000 to the victor) cannot win. If it is perceived as too controversial, it is seen as sensational and flippant. If it is regarded as too conventional, it is deemed to be dull and boring. The four artists this year fall between the two – always an awkward position in terms of attracting attention. Nevertheless, there is no video art, nothing too wildly conceptual or to shock and alarm. Instead the artists have presented rather considered work, each having a gallery to themselves.