PDA

View Full Version : Lost Worlds: What Have We Lost and Where Did It Go? - Michael Bywater


Bill
20th January 2005, 01:15 PM
This is the superb book written by one of our new members, and one of the best and funniest writers of the last 25 years, Michael Bywater.

This is a description:

"They go. They vanish. People. Civilizations. Languages. Philosophies. Works of art disappear, species are extinguished, books are lost, cities drown, things once thought immortal suddenly aren't there at all. Dunwich is drowned, Pompeii buried, Athena's statue gone from the Parthenon, Suetonius's Lives of the Great Whores gone the way of the Roman Empire. Whole libraries of knowledge, whole galleries of secrets.

Little things, too. Five Boys chocolate. Train compartments. Snuff, galoshes, smog. Your mother's perfume. Your father's tobacco. The way Paris used to smell. Dreams and innocence, keys and gods, wisdom and miracles: all lost.

So often, we are defined not by what we have, but by what we have lost along the way. Lost Worlds is an alphabetical glossary of the missing, a cabinet of absent curiosities.

Michael Bywater is a writer and broadcaster and writes the Lost World column for the Independent on Sunday.

'Ephemeral creatures: what is a man? What is he not? Mankind is just the dream of a shadow' - Pindar, Pythian Odes

What have we lost and where did it go?"

<iframe width="468" height="82" scrolling="no" frameborder=0 src="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=bookgrouponli-21&l=st1&search=Lost%20Worlds%20michael%20bywater&mode=books-uk&p=13&o=2&f=ifr&bg1=C6E7DE&lt1=_blank"> <table border='0' cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' width='468' height='82'><tr><td><A HREF='http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/redirect-home/bookgrouponli-21' target=_blank><img src="http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/G/02/associates/recommends/default_468x82.gif" width=468 height=82 border="0" access=regular></a></td></tr></table></iframe>

Mad Dog and Glory
5th February 2005, 10:41 AM
I have now bought this, and will take it on holiday with me. I will report back once I've read it.