Michael Bywater

Lost Worlds tries to capture and hence save for posterity a great many objects, fashions , fads, ,cultural curiosities and lacunae that Bywater considers echoes from the past. This is an odd anthology or miscellany of short essays and comments, arrranged alphabetically of a real rag bag of defunct or disappearing practices . It is likely to mystify or confuse anyone who is not English ie lived in the home counties , between the thirties snd the nineties of the 20th century. Some even go back further. I can't see this book translating well... Don't bother, too much will mystify, forget be lost in translation . The author does not quite pin down his decades , though there is a list of hideously seventies popular games, books, and hobbies. So glad to forget most . In about a hundred years time the book collector will come across this book and quietly chuckle at the quaint expressions and habits of the English and think they have found a key to lost English culture, At present, it is a book which is in turns clever, irritating , amusing and entertaining. Reading it induces many of thos "oh, yes I remember that" and "indeed where did it go" or "how hideous and that was not a survival in our home". Other of his rescued expressions or cultural norms are better left as relics of one's childhood or one's grandmother's hey days . It is clever enough to pass with the port on a cold Christmas afternoon but the fairly flippant and superficial glossing over of these oddities means that the book does not score as a bit of authoritative social history, Too superficial for my liking though there is a further reading list and the index is actually pretty detailed .… (meer)

This book is quite enjoyable, its topics will surely appeal to any wine lover and could become the center of a good conversation around the table, before a bottle of wine.
Subjects vary a lot and range from wine history to wine in literature to everyday tips to curious anecdotes about wine. I liked its comprehensive nature which makes it diverse and keeps the reader attention, page after page.

The downside is that there is no order in how the topics are arranged, one chapter could introduce the reader to the fabled wine of Antipaxos while the next one deal with the smell of petrol of some wines, followed by another one where the authors examine french omelette and wine matching. There isn't a unified path the reader can follow from the beginning to end and this make the book sometimes difficult to read (I put it aside and went back to it many times during last year).

Anyway a reading I recommend and a good basis for further researches on the subjects treated.… (meer)

This book is quite enjoyable, its topics will surely appeal to any wine lover and could become the center of a good conversation around the table, before a bottle of wine.
Subjects vary a lot and range from wine history to wine in literature to everyday tips to curious anecdotes about wine. I liked its comprehensive nature which makes it diverse and keeps the reader attention, page after page.

The downside is that there is no order in how the topics are arranged, one chapter could introduce the reader to the fabled wine of Antipaxos while the next one deal with the smell of petrol of some wines, followed by another one where the authors examine french omelette and wine matching. There isn't a unified path the reader can follow from the beginning to end and this make the book sometimes difficult to read (I put it aside and went back to it many times during last year).

Anyway a reading I recommend and a good basis for further researches on the subjects treated.… (meer)