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29+ Works 1,606 Members 53 Reviews

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Works by Richard Davenport-Hines

A Night at the Majestic (2006) 199 copies
Auden (1995) 137 copies
Vice: An Anthology (1993) 39 copies
Sex, Death and Punishment (1990) 29 copies
The Penguin Book of Vice (1995) 16 copies
The Macmillans (1992) 15 copies

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Subtitled "Four Hundred Years of Excess, Horror, Evil, and Ruin," this book is not what you should buy for your weird teen Goth nephew who wears a nose ring, black fingernail polish, listens to Marilyn Manson, and hangs out at the food court in the mall. Davenport-Hines' book is strictly a historic work, tracing Gothicism from the Middle Ages to today. While most of the book is interesting, the field is so big that the author can only bring surface examples to light without analyzing them too deeply. He has a section on the music of the Cure, and the literature of Poppy Z. Brite, but chose not to, or just could not, interview either one of them.

The author's biggest mistake is the amount of pages spent on Gothic architecture. The first half of the book is full of castle names, earls and dukes, and is of little interest to those who want to read about the Gothic lifestyle. The author does deconstruct the literature of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne rather well, in addition to a myriad of British authors whose names I am not familiar with, but might be interested in now. His coverage of Gothic art is average. The book includes photographs of many pieces of art, but the author must resign himself to describing pieces he could not include in the pictures, leading to reader frustration. I do slightly recommend this book, but do not be fooled by its dark cover. This covers four hundred years of Gothic HISTORY (despite the cover and marketing), not four hundred years of your emo nephew hanging out at the mall and listening to Marilyn Manson, who is not covered here.
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Charles_T_Tatum_Jr | 3 other reviews | Nov 5, 2023 |
I finally got around to finishing this one. I kept putting it off. It has a lot of great details about the disaster which cleared up some things for me.
 
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kslade | 31 other reviews | Dec 8, 2022 |
An English Affair: Sex, Class and Power in the Age of Profumo I think you'll either love this book or hate it. If you are English and understand the class system you have a chance of finding out. If you are not English thus whole thing may mystify you.Meticulously documented and annotated throughout, the author sets the scene chapter by chapter before the final drama unfolds. Without the preceding chapters that give the prevailing mores of the times in great detail, I think the scale of this scandal would be lost when looked at from the viewpoint of today's permissive times. The context is everything when dealing with historic events. What shattered the world a hundred years ago would not raise an eyebrow today.Example: In relation prosecuting Ward for living off immoral earnings, which was a put-up job, it was inconceivable at the time that either Christine Keeler or Mandy Rice-Davies could be self actualising females who could decide for themselves who they had sex with. Women having sex outside of marriage with different men at that time could only be, by definition, prostitutes.Rife with contradiction between the Establishment's stated morality and those of its ranking members, the ease of outright lies and their acceptance at all levels within the Establishment, the contrasts could not be clearer. Hypocrisy was and still is the hub of British class culture. The corrupt self-righteous newspapers calling for the blood of minor transgressors still rule the day in that God-forsaken land.Similar in context to the book about the Kray Twins that I read recently, another lid lifted of the filth and depravity of those who make the rules.… (more)
 
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Ken-Me-Old-Mate | 3 other reviews | Sep 24, 2020 |
A fascinating account,as promised on the cover, of the relationship between sex, class & power in the time of the Profumo scandal.

Davenport-Hines, despite swallowing a dictionary, has done his research to show how an age of class-bound deference moved into a sceptical swinging Britain. And shockingly reveals the close-ties between high power and a corrupt police force, where witnesses were threatened with trumped-up charges if they told the truth rather than towing the official line.
 
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LARA335 | 3 other reviews | Feb 11, 2020 |

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