Author: georgia DC

Bilingual editor, rewriter, French-to-English translator. Has written for 3am magazine, words without borders, The Independent, The Lady, Banipal, Prospect Magazine, Times Literary Supplement. Currently writes for The BookBlast Diary. Founder (1997) of London-based writing agency BookBlast.

Lesley Blanch Archive | W.R.N.S. on the Job, British Vogue, November 1941

Lesley Blanch was Features Editor of British Vogue 1937-45. During the Second World War, she was on the front line of women journalists covering a wide range of topics. She covered various aspects of Britain at war for the Ministry of Information, and documented the lives of women in the forces with her friend the photographer Lee Miller.

It is an indisputable fact that occupations and professions breed their own particular type. There are occupational faces, as there are occupational diseases, except in the case of the bored, spoiled, overfed idler, now fortunately rarely seen, save at luxurious hotels in ‘safe’ areas, where the face, and its accompanying malaise, might be described as non-occupational.

The ostler cannot be mistaken for the chauffeur, though doctors and lawyers, like poets and scientists, often pair indistinguishably. But the soldier, the sailor, and the airman are each distinct and apart front each other.

Continue reading Lesley Blanch Archive | W.R.N.S. on the Job, British Vogue, November 1941

Spotlight | BookBlast® on the blogosphere

The literary blogosphere is pullulating with writing and opinions on every imaginable subject, era, or school of writing; writers promoting books; readers offering an opinion or amateur reviews; and comment by informed book critics. Here are a few favourites . . .

– blogs for Francophiles

Paris Diary by Laure is ‘a very personal and subjective view of Paris life, like a morning phone call to my best friend’.

The Paris Review was founded in Paris by George Plimpton and friends in 1953 to introduce important writers of the day. The blog is great for readers wanting a shot of culture, but are short on time to read in depth.

Gallic Books publish some of the best French writing available in English translation. Publisher, Jane Aitken, was interviewed exclusively for The BookBlast Diary in November 2016.

– blogs for design aficionados

Browns Editions offer a design feast for the eyes and über-chic ideas.

Thames & Hudson has been an independent, family-owned company since it was founded in 1949 and its World of Art series of books is especially well known.

For that stylish LA look, you couldn’t do better than Mallery Roberts Morgan – a Los Angeles-based writer, curator and interior designer; and the Los Angeles correspondent of Architectural Digest France.

– blogs offering informed opinions

The Times Literary Supplement’s blog about books and ideas is a must-read regular.

Andrew Gallix is editor-in-chief of 3:AM Magazine, credited by The Guardian as being the first literary blog ever. He writes fiction and criticism, edits books, and teaches at the Sorbonne.

Maria Popova’s brain-pickings is a treasure trove of the heteroclite and the offbeat; an inspiring resource for browsing and sharing.

Continue reading Spotlight | BookBlast® on the blogosphere

Media Release | Joe Boyd: White bicycles #OnWilderShores

Joe Boyd, the record and film producer, whose memoir White Bicycles: Making Music in the Sixties has sold 75,000 copies worldwide, interviewed the late Lesley Blanch for The Guardian in 2005. They shared a love of Bulgarian gypsy music.

He and a panel of guests will discuss The Wilder Shores of Love, Lesley Blanch’s “cult book which pioneered a new approach to history writing,” on BBC Radio 4’s A Good Read, 31 March at 4.30pm.

Here is Joe on YouTube talking about Amoeba Music and some of his favourite albums from the sixties.

© 2015. The copyright to all the content of this site is held either by BookBlast® Ltd and/or the individual authors and creators. Q&A format(s) copyright © BookBlast® Brief quotations and links may be used provided that the use is fair dealing, and full and clear credit is given to BookBlast® Ltd and www.bookblast.com/blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original author and creator. Any enquiries, contact us via twitter DM @bookblast or email bookblastdiary [at] gmail [dot] com

The lead image of a gypsy playing a fiddle is copyright Lesley Blanch c/o The Estate of Lesley Blanch. All rights reserved. It is not permitted to change the image, to add to it, reproduce or modify it in any other way. In case of violation, we reserve the right to withdraw the right of use.

Guest Review | Philip Marsden | The Sabres of Paradise, Lesley Blanch

The Sabres of Paradise was first published in 1960, a hundred years after the story it recounts had ended, after the Russian conquest of the Caucasus was at last complete. Nikita Khrushchev was in the Kremlin. President Kennedy was running for the White House. Soviet power was at its height. The republics of the Caucasus were just another comer of the vast Soviet empire cowed into conformity by the brutalities of Stalin. The episode of Imam Shamyl’s thirty-year resistance to Russian expansion − perhaps the most dramatic story ever to emerge from the Caucasus (where dramatic stories are hardly in short supply) − had receded to its rightful place in ancient history. The days of small bands of mountain guerrillas raiding, hostage-taking, hiding up in the thick Chechen forests were long gone; whole divisions being tied down by such tactics was unthinkable in an age overshadowed by nuclear weapons.

Forty years on, the story looks a little different and a lot more relevant; now − post-Vietnam, post-Afghanistan, post-Soviet Union and post-September 11. Who, in 1960, would have dared predict that the heirs of the Red Army − that vast force which had done so much to shape the geo-politics of the late twentieth century, already humiliated by the Afghan mujahideen − should in 1996 be defeated, run out of its own territory by a band of lightly-armed Chechens which rarely exceeded a few thousand in number?

Continue reading Guest Review | Philip Marsden | The Sabres of Paradise, Lesley Blanch

Review | Two perfect his ‘n’ hers reads by Lesley Blanch

Introducting two very different yet complementary reads by Lesley Blanch.

Of Blanch’s biographies, The Sabres of Paradise: Conquest and Vengeance in the Caucasus was her favourite. Thorough research, a balanced approach and dramatic storytelling skills bring to life Imam Shamyl, the ‘Lion of Daghestan’, leader of the warring mountain tribes of Daghestan and Chechnya. From 1834-59 they fought to remain independent of Russia, strengthened only by the desire for an independent Caucasus and their religious faith. The Tzar took Shamyl’s eldest son as a hostage to St Petersburg. Shamyl captured two Georgian princesses (from the Tzarina’s entourage), a French governess and the children, and kept them in his harem until they could be exchanged for his son.

Continue reading Review | Two perfect his ‘n’ hers reads by Lesley Blanch

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