Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Little Book of Big History
WORK NOTES: with Jeremy Black
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NATIONALITY: British
https://www.birlinn.co.uk/Ian-Crofton/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, editor, and publisher. Former publisher and editor for reference companies, including Macmillan, Collins, and Dorling Kindersley.
WRITINGS
Guinness Encyclopedia, former editor-in-chief.
SIDELIGHTS
Ian Crofton is a writer, editor, and publisher who has worked in the reference publishing business for decades. He has more than twenty years of experience as a publisher and has worked for reference publishers that include Macmillan, Collins, and Dorling Kindersley. He also served as the editor-in-chief of the Guinness Encyclopedia, a general reference work on science, politics, technology, and the arts. A freelance writer and editor, he is the author of well over a dozen books on history, science, art, and language.
Science Books
Crofton’s books on science and technology include Atoms and Elements, Deserts and Semideserts, and Science without the Boring Bits.
In Atoms and Elements, Crofton and coauthor David Bradley cover basic atomic science in a style designed to inform and entertain young readers. Topics include subatomic particles, atoms as the basic building blocks of nature, the basic forms of matter, the elements and what they consist of, and more. The book also includes an introduction to the periodic table of elements.
Deserts and Semideserts covers basic concepts in earth science as it applies to deserts, semideserts, and related biomes. In collaboration with Michael Allaby and Robert Anderson, Crofton describes deserts such as the Gobi, the Sahara, and the Atacama. The book includes details on the people and creatures that live in these often harsh and inhospitable environments. School Librarian reviewer Gerry McSourley called the volume an “excellent book which conveys its information in straightforward fashion.”
Science without the Boring Bits offers a concise chronological account of the history of science, invention, and discovery. The book includes material on physics, botany, zoology, biology, medicine, and more.
History Books
In Crofton’s writings on history, he continues with the theme of presenting subjects “without the boring bits” with History without the Boring Bits and Scottish History without the Boring Bits.
History without the Boring Bits includes multiple snippets and tidbits of historical facts and lore, all assembled with the intent of providing a lively look at history that may have been missing from its readers’ formal educations. Crofton includes obscure facts, such as how an Egyptian caliph banned the making of women’s shoes and how, for years, it was required of British citizens to assemble in church every November 5th to celebrate the foiling of the infamous Gunpowder Plot that planned to blow up Parliament. “At its best, this history lite gives to the historically challenged reader a path into history heavy,” observed Financial Times contributor Jonathan Sale.
Scottish History without the Boring Bits similarly covers the history of Scotland, but with a focus on Scots-specific historical events and obscure facts. Crofton covers Scottish royalty, the country’s cultural history, religion, the supernatural, crime and punishment, and politics, such as the Jacobite Uprising. Jo Galloway, writing on the Historical Novel Society Website, called the book a “well researched history from the Dark Ages through to modern times.”
The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between, by Crofton and Jeremy Black, takes on the enormous task of summarizing the entirety of history. The authors start with the big bang, the event that started it all, and move at a rapid pace through evolution, prehistory, and modern civilization. The book “covers an enormous amount of material while trying to highlight all of the events, animals, concepts, and inventions” that make up the history of the universe and human civilization, commented Timothy Berge in Xpress Reviews. The volume “surprises with its distilled but generally comprehensive treatment of a vast subject,” observed a Kirkus Reviews writer.
Language Books
In the field of language, Crofton is known as the editor of the popular reference book Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, in collaboration with John Ayto. The dictionary contains hundreds of definitions of terms, descriptions of characters, and other information on words, idioms, slogans, and events derived from television, literature, comic strips, music, and computer games. The material covers fictional characters, mythological beasts, and other imaginative subjects as represented in more than 8,000 phrases.
Brewer’s Curious Titles: The Fascinating Stories behind More Than 1500 Famous Titles contains Crofton’s survey of the titles of hundreds of novels, plays, paintings, works of art, and musical composition. He explains the stories behind the titles of these works, covering where they originated, what they mean, and how they were selected. For example, he explains that the title of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land came from Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Joseph Haydn’s Miracle Symphony got its name after a chandelier crashed during its inaugural performance, “miraculously” missing the audience. James M. McCain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice was derived from the mailman’s habit of ringing the bell twice if bringing the writer a bill. Library Journal contributor Denise J. Stankovics called the book “informative and entertaining.”
General Nonfiction
Walking the Border: A Journey between Scotland and England is a book outside of Crofton’s usual areas of coverage. In this book, Crofton describes his adventures during a lengthy walk along the border between England and Scotland. His trip takes him “from the Lochmaben Stone near Gretna Green on the edge of the Solway Firth to the North Sea, and a precipitous cliff between Lamberton and the aptly named Conundrum,” noted London Guardian reviewer Stuart Kelly. Crofton’s trip was triggered by a political event, the Scottish referendum, a controversial vote taken in 2014 in which Scotland unsuccessfully sought independence from the United Kingdom.
Along the way, Crofton encounters numerous persons who define themselves as “borderers,” who have lived their lives on the Scottish/English border and who identify strongly with that transitional area between countries. The walk gave him the opportunity to explore border culture in depth and find out what it was that influences the borderland population. He muses on the actual concept of a border itself and what it means, politically, socially, and culturally. Other concepts, such as immigration and independence, are threaded throughout the narrative. “There is a lot of excellent natural description in this book, alongside a number of comic encounters with humans and livestock,” Kelly remarked.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Contemporary Review, October, 2005, review of Brewer’s Britain & Ireland, p. 256; spring, 2011, review of Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable, p. 393.
Financial Times, September 15, 2007, Jonathan Sale, review of History without the Boring Bits.
Guardian (London), January 11, 2003, John Mullan, review of Brewer’s Curious Titles; November 1, 2014, “Walking the Border: A Journey Between Scotland and England by Ian Crofton: The Bleak Beauty of Dead Water and Hungry Law Transcends Politics in the Debatable Lands,” p. 7.
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2017, review of The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between.
Library Journal, May 1, 2003, Denise J. Stankovics, review of Brewer’s Curious Titles, p. 102.
Publishers Weekly, May 15, 2017, review of The Little Book of Big History, p. 49.
School Librarian, spring, 2011, Gerry McSourley, review of Deserts and Semideserts, p. 41.
Xpress Reviews, April 28, 2017, Timothy Berge, review of The Little Book of Big History.
ONLINE
Alex Roddie Website, http://www.alexroddie.com/ (May 21, 2015), review of Walking the Border.
Historical Honey, http://www.historicalhoney.com/ (February 9, 2018), biography of Ian Crofton.
Historical Novel Society, http://www.historicalnovelsociety.org/ (November 1, 2015), Jo Galloway, review of Scottish History without the Boring Bits.
Kitchen Frolic, https://www.kitchenfrolic.ca/ (March 31, 2016), review of A Curious History of Food and Drink.
Ian Crofton was formerly the editor-in-chief of The Guinness Encyclopaedia, and has written a wide range of general reference books. His new book, 'A Curious History of Food & Drink' is out now!
Ian Crofton worked as a publisher of general reference books for twenty years (Collins, Guinness, Macmillan and Dorling Kindersley), and for the past decade have been a freelance editor and writer. He is the co-author (with John Ayto) of Brewer’s Britain and Ireland and of the revised edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable. He was also editor-in-chief of The Guinness Encyclopedia (1990).
Ian Crofton is a freelance editor and writer who has worked as a publisher of general reference books for 20 years. He is the coauthor of Brewer’s Britain and Ireland and Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable. He is the former editor in chief of The Guinness Encyclopedia.
Crofton, Ian: THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG HISTORY
(June 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Crofton, Ian THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG HISTORY Pegasus (Adult Nonfiction) $26.95 7, 4 ISBN: 978-1-68177-436-7
A 272-page "back story to the chronicle of humanity."Former Guinness Encyclopaedia editor-in-chief Crofton (Walking the Border: A Journey Between Scotland and England, 2014, etc.) and prolific historian Black (History/Exeter Univ.; The Holocaust: History and Memory, 2016, etc.) collaborate on a cheeky concept that surprises with its distilled but generally comprehensive treatment of a vast subject, from the Big Bang to the possible end of the universe. With few exceptions, and some unavoidable biases, this little book delivers on its promise thanks to carefully thought-out summaries by the authors. While the brush strokes are necessarily broad, the book manages to convey a great deal of information in under 300 pages. Though little of this will be new to avid readers of science and history, the book is valuable for its concision in exploring an enormous range of topics. After setting the table with cosmic origins and the emergence of life on Earth, the authors focus on the rise of modern humans and the development of language, writing, technologies (in the most extensive sense), civilization, and cultures. War, religion, the arts, philosophy, economics, law, and the birth of cities and empires each get their due, as do revolutions in the social contract, politics, agriculture, electronics, and information. The contemporary issues of globalization, terrorism, environmental degradation, genocide, genetic engineering, exponential population growth, and gender equality also are condensed to their basic components, all while avoiding the reductive quality of some capsule histories. Scant attention is paid to space travel, as it is more or less in a state of stasis. To close, the authors look ahead with some rather vague future predictions, and they extend the customary grace note of hope. Timelines of pivotal events help punctuate the narrative structure of this history-in-brief, an engaging, admirably thorough introduction for new readers of history with short attention spans.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Crofton, Ian: THE LITTLE BOOK OF BIG HISTORY." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A493329074/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=418a82d7. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A493329074
The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between
264.20 (May 15, 2017): p49+.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between
Ian Crofton and Jeremy Black. Pegasus, $26.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-68177-436-7
In this remarkable book, Crofton (Walking the Border), former editor-in-chief of the Guinness Encyclopedia, and Black (The Holocaust: History and Memory)., professor of history at Exeter University, adopt a macrohistorical perspective as they view humankind in the context of the history of the universe. Beginning with the singularity that exploded into the big bang, they trace the birth of stars, planets, bacteria, dinosaurs, and apes before arriving at humans. Along the way, the authors investigate such topics as what makes us human and how we differ from the dead ends in our family tree. In quick succession the authors show how humans covered the globe, farmed, domesticated animals, and conquered other humans. They then turn to a more difficult issue: moral codes. While a survey of philosophy and religion concludes that moderation, tolerance, and charity are considered fundamental, many subsequent chapters demonstrate how mechanical inventions facilitated slavery or serfdom. The final section warns that intolerance and greed foment continued conflicts, global warming, economic imbalance, and other factors that may lead to the end of human civilization. As the universe expands forever into the void, Crofton and Black leave readers with "a humbling insight into how contingent and fleeting our existence is." (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between." Publishers Weekly, 15 May 2017, p. 49+. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A492435663/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=8457a403. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A492435663
Brewer's Curious Titles: the Fascinating Stories Behind More Than 1500 Famous Titles
Denise J. Stankovics
128.8 (May 1, 2003): p102.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2003 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Cassell, dist. by Sterling. 2003. &496p. comp. by Ian Crofton. index. ISBN 0304-36130-5. $24.95. REF
In selecting the novels, plays, paintings, and musical works whose titles he explains here, Crofton (A Dictionary of Art Quotations) acknowledges that keeping the volume to a manageable length made it impossible to include all the works he would have liked to cover. As he notes, the book is "not intended as a comprehensive cultural companion, but as an exploration of byways, oddities and serendipities." Entries run from D.H. Lawrence's Aaron's Rod through Edward Albee's Zoo Story and tell us the story behind each title. The section on T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, for example, indicates that the title is taken from Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and associated with the quest for the Holy Grail and cites works whose titles derive from Eliot's poem. The resource also features titles in such quirky categories as body parts, "the oddest title of the year award," St. Cecelia, and Salome. One index covers the authors, composers, and artists whose works are included, while the other cross-references sources from which titles explained in the book are taken. This informative and entertaining work is recommended for both public and academic libraries.
--Denise J. Stankovics, Rockville PL., Vernon, CT
Stankovics, Denise J.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Stankovics, Denise J. "Brewer's Curious Titles: the Fascinating Stories Behind More Than 1500 Famous Titles." Library Journal, 1 May 2003, p. 102. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A101861302/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c07b6dd0. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A101861302
Allaby, Michael; Anderson, Robert and Crofton, Ian: Biomes Atlases: Deserts and SemiDeserts
Gerry McSourley
59.1 (Spring 2011): p41.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 The School Library Association
http://www.sla.org.uk/school-librarian.php
Allaby, Michael; Anderson, Robert and Crofton, Ian
Biomes Atlases: Deserts and SemiDeserts
Raintree, 2010, pp64, 14.99 [pounds sterling]
978 1 4062 1835 0
This title in the 'Biomes Atlases' series looks at the world's deserts. Five double-page chapters detail major deserts such as the Sahara, the Gobi and the Atacama deserts, and five longer chapters concentrate on the people and animals living in them, the different climates and plants and what the future may be. The book is illustrated throughout with maps, photographs and charts; the style is accessible, with short sentences and a glossary of words which may be unfamiliar to readers; there is also an index and a brief list of books and websites for further reading. This is an excellent book which conveys its information in straightforward fashion; it is well worth adding to the library.
McSourley, Gerry
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McSourley, Gerry. "Allaby, Michael; Anderson, Robert and Crofton, Ian: Biomes Atlases: Deserts and SemiDeserts." School Librarian, Spring 2011, p. 41. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A252385596/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c9690b6e. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A252385596
Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable
289.1686 (Autumn 2007): p393.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2007 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable. John Ayto and Ian Crofton. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]30.00. xiii + 853 pages. ISBN 0-304-36809-1. This second edition replaces that of 2000 and has been fully revised. In addition the editors have added some 1000 new phrases drawn from contemporary life so that the total now exceeds 8,000. The larger number of American terms reflects the increasing role of US English in world English. As hitherto this remarkable volume not only lists essential etymological information regarding 'words, names, titles and phrases' but also gives information about the use and implication of neologisms: this is especially useful for those learning English. The entries are clearly and often humorously written and remind one of the richness of the English language. That language is becoming more hyperbolic and the use of slang is now more acceptable: this volume is, therefore, more valuable than ever. (J.M.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable." Contemporary Review, vol. 289, no. 1686, 2007, p. 393. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A173515444/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3cb7c17e. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A173515444
Brewer's Britain & Ireland
287.1677 (Oct. 2005): p256.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2005 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
Brewer's Britain & Ireland. John Ayto and Ian Crofton, compilers. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. [pounds sterling]30.00. xxxi + 1267 pages. ISBN 0-304-35385-X. This massive book sets out to give readers 'a rounded and integrated portrait of the places of these islands and the names our ancestors (and we ourselves) have given them'. It covers towns, villages, rivers, lakes, hills, moors, and islands. Each entry begins with the entry's etymology after which is a description and, where fitting, a history of its topographical position, history and architecture and an explanation of any nickname. Entries include those famous people born in the location and customs and legends associated with the place. Quotations concerning entries are included as well as works of fiction in which the places occur. The compilers have also included places outside the U.K. and Eire that share place-names as well as terms that use a place name in their title such as 'Manchester School' or 'Eccles cake'. There are entries for fictional places (e.g. Barchester) and for idioms, music and literary works that use place-names, e.g. Kilkenny cats, On Wenlock Edge, and Heart of Midlothian. This volume is a treasure-trove filled with useful information, well set out both to attract the general reader and to help the scholar. The compilers are to be warmly congratulated. (J.M.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Brewer's Britain & Ireland." Contemporary Review, vol. 287, no. 1677, 2005, p. 256. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A139752079/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7aee0baa. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A139752079
Crofton, Ian & Jeremy Black. The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between
Timothy Berge
(Apr. 28, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Crofton, Ian & Jeremy Black. The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between. Pegasus. Jul. 2017. 272p. illus. index. ISBN 9781681774367. $26.95; ebk. ISBN 9781681774886. HIST The story of the universe portrayed in this work by Crofton (Science Without the Boring Bits) and Black (history, Exeter Univ.; The Holocaust: History and Memory) moves humans from the central agent of history, instead placing them among many working pieces of the universe. Beginning with the big bang theory and quickly moving through evolution, prehistory, and early civilizations and making its way toward the modern world, the book covers an enormous amount of material while trying to highlight all of the events, animals, concepts, and inventions that make up human civilization and the universe. Similar to E.H. Gombrich's A Little History of the World, the language and tone are accessible to young readers without alienating older ones. The ambitious scope of the book leaves many topics underdeveloped to the extent that their inclusion is unnecessary. A section on disease offers little more than a list of named illnesses. At the same time, certain exclusions are confusing and troubling. The section on genocide provides three sentences on the Holocaust, yet the sections leading up to and covering World War II fail to mention it at all.
Verdict While parts of this book may provide a new perspective on humanity's place in the universe, many sections are too facile and leave the work skewed and unsatisfying.--Timothy Berge, SUNY Oswego Lib.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Berge, Timothy. "Crofton, Ian & Jeremy Black. The Little Book of Big History: The Story of the Universe, Human Civilization, and Everything in Between." Xpress Reviews, 28 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494890175/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4e471a5a. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494890175
Review:: Non-fiction: Walking the Border: A Journey Between Scotland and England by Ian Crofton: The bleak beauty of Dead Water and Hungry Law transcends politics in the Debatable Lands
(Nov. 1, 2014): Arts and Entertainment: p7.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2014 Guardian Newspapers. Guardian Newspapers Limited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian
Byline: Stuart Kelly
Although this book is pegged to a particular political and historic event - the recent Scottish referendum - it has virtues and insights that transcend the circumstances of its writing. Crofton decided to walk the length of the English/Scottish border, from the Lochmaben Stone near Gretna Green on the edge of the Solway Firth to the North Sea, and a precipitous cliff between Lamberton and the aptly named Conundrum. Even before the votes were counted, any savvy analyst might have suspected the split in the south of Scotland (Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders voted by a two-to-one margin against independence). This was not, I would argue, because of any deep-seated commitment to the Union, but because, as Crofton finds time and again, people in the Borders define themselves as Borderers first and foremost.
Cards on the table: I'm a Borderer. My parents grew up in Kelso; my grandparents came from Sorbie, Greenlaw, Kelso and Glasgow; I grew up in Galashiels and Lilliesleaf and now live in Heriot; my parents live in Yetholm. As a Borderer, I relished reading about Kershope and Bloody Bush, The Schil and the Carter Bar, Deadwater and Hungry Law. There's a toponymic poetry about these names that conjures the eerie and empty beauty of the Borders. Crofton - despite being from the alien metropolis of Edinburgh and having spent 25 years in the Great Wen of London - clearly hears and eloquently conveys that haunting poetry as well.
The Borders were sometimes referred to as the Debatable Lands, and how they relate to Scotland and England has always been contentious. Sir Walter Scott - a Borderer too - made the claim in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border that "the accession of James to the English crown converted the extremity into the centre of his kingdom". What was this new "centre" like? "Utter desolation" according to James Logan Mack in 1924, "a desolate looking tract of treacherous moss-hags and oozy peat flats, traversed by deep sykes and interspersed with black stagnant pools" wrote William Weaver Tomlinson in 1888, and to Daniel Defoe in the 1720s, "a state of irrevocable decay". There are more conventionally picturesque places were one to stray from the border - the fertile Merse, St Mary's Loch, the quaint village of Norham, the pre-Raphaelite frescos in Lady Waterford Hall in Etal. But Crofton sticks to his conceit, with admirable precision.
The border is a legal border: the Scottish legal system, based on Roman law, was enshrined and protected in the Act of Union, as opposed to the English system of incremental precedent. It leads to some curious anomalies that Crofton unpicks with all the zeal of someone confronted with the utterly arbitrary. If a stone is thrown by a man on the Scottish side at a person standing in the English waters, is the crime to be tried under Scots or English law? With different laws of trespass and access, where might a rambler in Kielder Forest accidentally commit a misdemeanour (and would that case be found "not proven" in Jedburgh, but the walker "guilty" in the courts of Carlisle?) I remember, at the age of 10, asking my grandpa if you could do whatever you wanted in the few feet between the "You are now leaving Scotland" sign and the "Welcome to England" sign on the B6352. If all this seems a little pernickety, consider the 1999 redrawing of the maritime boundary by Tony Blair, an act that many considered a pre-emptive "sea grab" of 6,000 square miles containing the odd oilfield or six. How the maritime border is determined may be a technical topic, but it raises testy passions on both sides.
There is a lot of excellent natural description in this book, alongside a number of comic encounters with humans and livestock. The interlude on the 2013 commemorations of the 500th anniversary of the battle of Flodden allows Crofton to sample the indigenous culture of the Common Ridings, but to get the full flavour requires seeing more than one festival. A kind of strict bacchanalia, these have always intrigued me (I'm told the supermarket in Hawick stocks more alcohol for the Common Riding, below, than Christmas and Hogmanay combined). They have strange nuances - each town elects two principals to ride the boundaries, and the principals of other towns accompany them. When the Kelso Laddie and Lass ride to Yetholm, they are welcomed by its local principals, the Bari Gadgie and the Bari Manashi, whose names attest to the Romany heritage there. Just over the border, near Flodden, is a strange art-naif garden called the Concrete Menagerie, with giraffes, Churchill, Burns and elephants all with marbles for eyes and sometimes dentures for teeth. It's one of the saddest places in the world. Head up beyond Langholm and you'll find the Samye-Ling Buddhist centre, complete with gilded Nagarjuna and over the moor, the artist Ian Hamilton Finlay's garden, Little Sparta, a provocation aimed at Edinburgh's claim to be the Athens of the North.
Crofton has kept neat limits to his exploration of border culture. I would encourage him to go deeper as well into this surrealist hinterspace. It is a Mad God's Own Country.
Stuart Kelly
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Review:: Non-fiction: Walking the Border: A Journey Between Scotland and England by Ian Crofton: The bleak beauty of Dead Water and Hungry Law transcends politics in the Debatable Lands." Guardian [London, England], 1 Nov. 2014, p. 7. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A388809635/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b4f8b6a0. Accessed 11 Jan. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A388809635
First look: Walking the Border by Ian Crofton
ON 21/05/2015 READING TIME: 1 MINUTE
Walking the Border:
A Journey Between Scotland and England
by Ian Crofton
I have just started reading this handsome volume by Ian Crofton. The author has a number of books to his name, and has a reputation for bringing history and facts to life in an engaging way. He’s also a keen climber and walker. The outdoors and writing often go together, don’t they?
The premise is straightforward enough – it’s a book about walking the border between England and Scotland. I was expecting an account of the walk, but from the first page it’s apparent that a great deal more is going on here in addition to the coverage on the hiking itself. The first chapter explores the very concept of borders and the author weaves his research throughout the book. He visits and talks to immigrants and refugees at many of the UK’s borders, and there’s also some very topical material on the Scottish independence question. I suspect these issues will become absolutely central to the story Ian Crofton has to tell.
Some readers are bound to disagree with the author’s political views – not usually a concern in a straightforward hiking book – but this is hardly a manifesto or an opinionated rant. From what I’ve read so far, it’s an intelligent and informed study on the very concept of borders. This side of the book was a pleasant surprise and I think I’m going to really enjoy this one.
As always, I’ll follow this post up with a full review when I have finished reading it.
Disclaimer: the publisher sent me an advance copy of this book to review.
Brewer's Curious Titles
edited by Ian Crofton
548pp, Weidenfeld, £14.99
Brewer's Curious Titles compiled by Ian Crofton
Buy Brewer's Curious Titles at Amazon.co.uk
John Mullan
Sat 11 Jan ‘03 00.23 GMT
A title can be an invitation, a challenge, a promise, a warning. As well as a sign over the entrance, it can be a guide through what follows. A title can either vivify the implications of a work, or reveal the mere pretensions of its author. Sometimes it lends all meaning to what we read or hear or see. Abstract and conceptual art have taken the act of naming to one limit of its significance. Tracey's Emin's famous tent, Everyone I've Ever Slept With, requires its title. Clichéd yet indiscreet, it is the one really brilliant thing about the work. Abstract paintings such as Robert Motherwell's Elegies to the Spanish Republic or Mondrian's Broadway Boogie-Woogie derive their gravitas or wit from the labels that the artists have given them.
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In literature, too, a title can be indispensable. The title of a book can intimate a contract with its reader and become a constant hint to the imagination. So Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse turns a proposed holiday jaunt into a symbol of human longing. The giving of the title captures a transformation of the ordinary into the visionary that is the novel's activity on its every page. Unsurprisingly, most of the examples in Ian Crofton's highly selective compendium come from literature, where the blazon, being in the same medium as the work, seems to be especially intimate with it. They seem signs of authorial intent.
With paintings and music we often find that the titles are but popular nicknames. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata is so-called because a 19th-century listener likened the piece to moonlight playing on the waters of Lake Lucerne. Haydn's Miracle Symphony got its name because a chandelier crashed from the roof at its first performance, "miraculously" missing the audience. Paintings too, like Constable's The Hay Wain or Rembrandt's The Night Watch have taken titles that were popular tags and no part of the painter's intention.
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Film titles, being devised to hook the attention, are often both powerful and uninteresting, their job done once you have bought your ticket. The occasional subtleties are easy to ignore. The assonance of Mean Streets seems expressive enough without spotting Raymond Chandler's quote - "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean." Yet the allusion advertises Scorsese's quest for low-life nobility. And what about Reservoir Dogs, surely one of the most memorable film titles of the past decade? Sadly there is no entry to tell you it is Tarantino's private cineaste's joke about mishearing the title of Louis Malle's Au revoir les enfants.
"In selecting titles for inclusion, I have concentrated on those that are either curious in themselves, or that have a curious story behind them," declares Crofton. He is best when there really are "stories behind" the titles. You get James M Cain's explanation of The Postman Always Rings Twice (two rings meant the postman was bringing the hard-up writer a bill).
Yet there are stories he misses too. Milton planned a work called "Adam Unparadized" before he produced the perfect Paradise Lost (a phrase exactly enacting the loss that is our fallen state). Little Dorrit has its sentimental ring, but is surely better than Dickens's too easily sarcastic draft title, "Nobody's Fault".
The collection also omits subtitles. The Rape of the Lock, Middlemarch and The Good Soldier, for instance, are each shaped by one of these: "An Heroi-Comical Poem", "A Study of Provincial Life", "A Tale of Passion". Here the author plays with a reader's expectations, telling us something wry or enigmatic about the narrative that follows. Crofton gives a good sketch of the sources for the title of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but does not mention the subtitle that announces its satirical ends: "A Novel Without a Hero". Sometimes the insistence of a subtitle can amount to force. Think of Thomas Hardy's "A Pure Woman" appended to the title of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. The effect is the stronger given the notorious uncertainty of what happened to Tess when Alec d'Urberville took advantage of her that night in the Chase - was she seduced? Or was it rape? Hardy's subtitle is defiant in the face of imagined censoriousness. Then there are the titles that work by irony or "antiphrasis". Far From the Madding Crowd is about passion and violence, not rural calm. Ulysses does not have any epic hero. Brave New World and Great Expectations are well nigh sardonic labels.
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Many famous titles work by quotation, and Crofton is especially attentive to these: The Power and the Glory, Tender Is the Night, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Sometimes these most suggestive borrowings advertise a resonance that is not realised. Huxley seems a great title-maker while not a great novelist: Eyeless in Gaza, After Many a Summer, Mortal Coils: they all sound good, taking their poetry from, respectively, Milton, Tennyson and Shakespeare, but their stories and characters hardly linger. Eugene O'Neill was a good playwright but a great namer of his plays: The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, A Long Day's Journey into Night.
Yet you see too, in the book's omissions, how the titles that most profoundly affect a reader are not always obviously "curious". My favourite is Charlotte Brontë's Villette. By not naming the novel after its strange, secretive heroine, Lucy Snowe, Brontë removes us further from her. By turning Brussels, where she had been a pupil-teacher, into "Villette", an invented city, Brontë seems to show how experience has been transformed into the puzzling, uncanny shapes of fiction. We are in a place we might almost recognise, but do not. Undemonstrative, but exerting its uncanny influence on every page, it demonstrates how finding a title is an art.
· John Mullan is senior lecturer in English at University College London
Scottish History without the Boring Bits
BY IAN CROFTON
APPEARED IN
HNR Issue 74 (November 2015)
REVIEWED BY
Jo Galloway
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In his account of Scotland’s history, Ian Crofton freely admits “that only a certain proportion of the events mentioned herein actually took place”. This well researched history from the Dark Ages through to modern times takes a gentle potter through the annals of Scotland’s past, picking anecdotes seemingly at random from various publications, periodicals and even gravestones.
From the birth of a nation, to the birth of the deep-fried Mars Bar, Crofton seeks out the obscure. Through grim to fantastic, via murder, poisoning, witchcraft and monsters, with Covenanters and Jacobites thrown in for good measure, rather than the well-known incidents in Scotland’s history, Crofton’s readers will find the otherwise undiscovered. Embellished with the exploits of lords, lairds and ladies, as well as serfs and soldiers, the book enlightens us on court judgements over the ages, from the nailing of ears and tongues, through various nasty forms of public execution, to the hanging of puppies.
Make no mistake, this is not an easy read. More a book to dip into rather than to wade through, it does supply the odd chuckle. However Crofton’s intention to entertain rather than educate is sometimes strained, and for this reviewer mostly unsuccessful.
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Review by Jonathan Sale
SEPTEMBER 15, 2007
History Without The Boring Bits
by Ian Crofton
Quercus £16.99, 224 pages
FT bookshop price: £13.59
As Sam Cooke so wisely put it, “Don’t know much about histor-ee.” If, like me, your school’s eccentric curriculum snatched you away from your history class at the age of 11, you will never have learnt that Attila the Hun died of a nosebleed. And you will probably be ignorant of the fact that in 1021 Hakim the Mad, Caliph of Egypt, banned the making of women’s shoes. It will also have escaped your attention that in 1349 Edward III instituted a ban – sadly rescinded later – on the playing of football. It is left to History Without the Boring Bits to enlighten me now, decades later.
Ian Crofton’s centuries-old snippets include: the Thirty-eight Minute War between Britain and Zanzibar (1896); the legalisation of farting (43AD); and the repeal of a law that had made it compulsory to celebrate in church, every November 5, the foiling of the gunpowder plot (1859).
At its best, this history lite gives to the historically challenged reader a path into history heavy. The serious sequel to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was the first world war; the intriguing sideline is the story that he was a victim of the Curse of the White Deer, having shot an albino stag in defiance of a local legend declaring this to be a bad career move.
Similarly, the 1812 retreat from Moscow was enlivened by the ferryman of whom Napoleon enquired whether he had seen any French deserters. “No,” replied the honest oarsperson, “you’re the first.”
One story concerns a 1940 air raid on the Scapa Flow naval base, resulting not in the heavy British casualties claimed by the Germans, but merely in a direct hit on an unfortunate bunny, whose corpse was dragged on stage by Flanagan and Allen for “Run, Rabbit, Run.”
It is a mallard that lives on musically at All Souls, Oxford, to commemorate the one which flew out of a sewer while the college was being constructed in 1437. Every century the dons sing a birdy song in honour of this mallard imaginaire.
An odd entry. Some are even more sloppily chosen. In 1797 Napoleon appointed a new surgeon-in-chief. In 1787 a beggar rejected a bowl of soup with maggots in it. Boring! And not even history.
NB: I cannot confirm the accuracy of any of the above. After all, I haven’t done any history since I was 11.
A Curious History Of Food And Drink By Ian Crofton {Book Review}
March 31, 2016
A Curious History Of Food And Drink By Ian Crofton {Book Review}
A Curious History of Food and Drink by Ian Crofton
title: A Curious History of Food and Drink
author: Ian Crofton
publication date: October 23, 2013
publisher: Quercus
This book is for all those food lovers who are ever eager to hear about new, strange, and wonderful dishes.
— Ian Crofton (A Curious History of Food and Drink)
Did you know…
… that in 2005, archeologists uncovered the world’s oldest noodles in Lajia, China. The noodles were 4,000 years old, made of millet and buried with an earthenware bowl.
… circa 100 BC, part of the pay given to Roman soldiers was called a salarium since it was intended for the purchase of salt
… kopi luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, which is by collecting coffee beans eaten by wild civets was discovered circa 1850
These are just some of the interesting tidbits to be found in Crofton’s A Curious History of Food and Drink.
Starting waaaaay back with the hippo soup eaten in Africa in 6000 BC and moving step by step chronologically forward, Crofton makes pit stops along the way through history, stopping here and there to discuss bizarre anecdotes, legends and origin stories of various foods and drinks.
While I love food history and food facts, I found the lack of cohesion throughout the book a little jarring and the blurbs often too short. Many times, some interesting fact or story is mentioned in a couple of sentences and then that’s it. No elaboration, no footnotes with further sources of investigation, nothing. It felt like a letdown and only teased my curiosity to the point where it got annoying after awhile. I jotted down a lot of little sidenotes for myself and plan on hitting the internet to learn more, but feel that I shouldn’t have to work so hard to satisfy my curiosity. I just wanted to know how some of the stories ended! There were just TOO many half finished thoughts and stories in the book for me to feel satisfied by the time I was finished. There were recipes sprinkled throughout, but they were generally of the ‘shock value’ variety, so after a while, I skipped over those.
I understand that no book that tries to encompass the “history of food and drink” into one small, enjoyable volume will ever be able to cover everything, but I would have appreciated slightly longer blurbs, or at least a very good footnotes/source material section so that I could continue reading about subjects that I wanted to learn more about. This is an entertaining book for anyone interested in some fun and bizarre food facts, but probably not for someone looking to learn more about food history.
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