CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
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Page after page of wondrous revelation
The largely unknown and historically neglected Caucasus emerges as a land of never-ending fascination, writes STEVE ANDREW
(L to R) Cover: the three-nave Alanian church of Shoana from the early 10th century in Karachay-Cherkessia, Russian Federation; The 2,415-metre-high mountain Ilandagh, the ‘Snake Mountain,’ in Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan
[(L to R) )Alexander Svirkin / Christoph Baumer]
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
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PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
History of the Caucasus Vol 1
At the Crossroads of Empire
by Christoph Baumer
IB Tauris £27
BY any standard, the Caucasus is a vast geographical area, dominated by beautiful landscapes of snow-capped mountains and steep-sided valleys, its often unique ecosystems harbour a multitude of fascinating animal and plant species.
Its human population is likewise just as interesting, composed as it is of a complex and ever-changing plethora of nations, languages, and cultures.
Although the term “cultural hearth” has fallen out of favour in anthropological circles, if ever it could be applied to an area, then the Caucasus would definitely fit the remit, antecedents to many a civilisation having their origins there.
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JOE GILL marvels at the history of a highly complex nomadic and hunter/gatherer society without a hierarchical class system
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old