Kirjahaku

In 1867, a California newspaper commissioned Mark Twain to travel to the Holy Lands. The trip provided the humorist with an abundance of material for his satiric classic "The Innocents Abroad." A century and a half later, author Ian Strathcarron scrupulously retraces Twain's footsteps, recounting the history of his predecessor's journeys and his own impressions of the region and its people.

"Dear me It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it." Mark Twain's quip arose in the course of an around-the-world lecture tour. Driven by financial necessity, the famed humorist and student of human nature undertook a year-long series of far-flung engagements that would provide both ready cash and the material for one of his most successful books: Following the Equator, which recounts the author's experiences during a two-and-a-half-month sojourn through India.A century after the publication of Following the Equator, Ian Strathcarron re-creates Twain's itinerary. Strathcarron -- who followed Twain's journey through the Middle East in a previous travel book, Innocence and War -- begins in Bombay, faithfully retracing his predecessor's steps through Benares, Calcutta, Darjeeling, Delhi, Lahore, and other stops along the Grand Tour of 1896. The modern-day writer offers fascinating insights into the region's timeless qualities as well as the rampant changes that have occurred in the course of the past century.

Lord Byron completed his Grand Tour of the Mediterranean between 1809 and 1811, leaving England at the age of twenty-one as an undiscovered soul and returning as Byron, with all that implies: the brand, the baggage and the brio. Lord Strathcarrons re-Tour follows in Byrons footsteps, revisiting the places the poet visited two hundred years ago and comparing what he found then to what one finds there now. At each point the re-Tour meets todays equivalents to the kings, consuls, governors, chieftains and gangsters that the Grand Tour met before it. Witty and perceptive, the re-Tour reveals much about Lord Byron and much too about how the world has changed in two centuries.

Ian Strathcarron follows Mark Twain and his caravanserai as it sways across the Holy Land and the two writers' contrasting adventures and observations are told in Innocence and War. Twain's pilgrims landed in Beirut and went on to Baalbec and Damascus. They then headed south through the Golan Heights, the Galilee and Nazareth then finally on to Jerusalem, Jericho, the Dead Sea, Bethlehem and Jaffa. Strathcarron follows their exact route though the countries are now Lebanon, Syria, Israel and the West Bank-with diplomatic diversions by sea on the writer's yacht Vasco da Gama, where needed. Together they meet the tribes and tribulations of the Holy Land, where the religious is political and the political is religious, where natural beauty meets man-made squalor, where hope and despair hang from the same tree and where trouble is always close at hand. Travel was troublesome then and it is troublesome now. Troublemakers and troubleshooters vie for supremacy. Both protagonists suffer for their troubles-and only sometimes laugh it off.

In 1895/6 the sixty-year-old Mark Twain set off on a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts from a publishing company bankruptcy, notes from which a year later became his final travel book Following the Equator. Two years later he wrote, 'How I did loathe that journey around the world! except the sea-part and India.' Although he was only in India for just over two of the twelve months, his exploits and observations there take up forty per cent of the book-and by common consent are by far the best and liveliest part of it. In The Indian Equator the Mark Twain travel trilogist Ian Strathcarron, his wife and photographer Gillian and his factota Sita follow in his mentor's footsteps, train tracks and boat wakes tracing the route that Twain, his wife Livy, his daughter Clara, his manager Smythe and his bearer Satan took as they crisscrossed the sub-continent. Leaving from the Bombay that was and the Mumbai that is, both writers follow the lecture circuit of old India--including what is now Pakistan--across the plains and cities of the north up to the peaks of the Himalayas by way of Baroda, Jaipur, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares/Varanasi, Calcutta/Kolkata, Darjeeling, Lahore and Rawalpindi. Staying in the same Raj clubs, travelling down the same train lines, meeting the high and mighty and the downtrodden and destitute, Twain and Strathcarron are absorbed by an India that then was and now is 'not for the faint of heart nor mild of spirit nor weak of mind nor dull of sense nor correct of politic'; a rapidly changing yet still deeply traditional society where 'a few hundred million have grabbed the twenty-first century by the whiskers and many more hundred million still tuck the nineteenth century into bed at night'. Mark Twain loved the India of 1896; like his trilogist, he would love it still.

Nigel Molesworth, ‘the curse of St. Custard's’, was a much-loved post-war fictional schoolboy character who featured in a series of books by Geoffrey Willans and illustrated by Ronald Searle. The books also featured the headmaster Grimes, Nigel’s annoying younger brother Molesworth 2, his best friend Peason, the head boy Grabber and the school wet Fotherington-Thomas. Nigel’s main characteristic was his cynicism and in Nigel Molesworth’s Cynical Tendency he has, through the success of his YouTube channel The Cynical Tendency, started a Cynical Tendency political party and his school friends have all become heads of the main political parties. The play starts with a Prologue for those unfamiliar with the characters, and the action is then set just after a general election in the near future, the result of which was chaotic and all the players could possibly become Prime Minister but only with Nigel’s support. Nigel on the other hand…

Sophie Chang has been actively pursuing her artistic exploration in recent years. Her works incorporate Western painting style into the freehand style (or xieyi) of Chinese ink wash paintings, and integrate expressive use of colours into metaphysical spirituality. Chang has focused her studies on ink wash and calligraphy in recent years, and has employed the techniques of collage to merge Eastern subtleties of ink in her works with Western influences. Sophie Chang's artistic journey progresses from realistic imagery to spiritual abstract languages; and through her works she expresses her inner maturity and clarity ("a mountain seen remains a mountain being"). Ch'an philosophy looks through the land of the soulful heart, mirroring the spirit of compassion and universal love through years of life experiences.

Pepper the dachshund therapy dog sets off across the African Plains to cheer up the unhappy elephant Poncho. Along the way she meets a giraffe living with camels, survives a wildebeest stampede, makes friends with an aardvark, walks with a leopard through a valley of warthogs, befriends a vegan crocodile, swims with an inflatable hippopotamus, steals a picnic, avoids hungry lions, sprints with an ostrich and is charged by a bull elephant. And she hasn’t even met Poncho yet.

When in July 2024 the incoming Labour Government announced as one of its priorities to stop hereditary peers sitting and voting in the House of Lords, Unicorn’s Chairman and backbench hereditary peer Lord Strathcarron decided to write about the political machinations involved in the Government trying to abolish him on the one hand, and the Opposition trying to foil abolition on the other. The result is an insider’s guide to the workings of the Parliamentary process, with direct access to the movers and shakers involved, and a not always entirely complimentary commentary on the key players involved.

In ‘Delightful, Enchanting’ Annabel Fairfax shows us the vivid humour of her work, with oil and watercolour paintings from her many travels around the world to the peaceful haven of her studio on the Isle of Wight. Fairfax’s art captures scenes as they are in the moment, with a painterly dexterity that deploys wit and imagination. Her paintings are an interpretation of the subject matter, the world seen through this artist’s eyes and the results are works of art that are collected and hung by art lovers all over the world.

Legend has it that the Andrea Moda Formula One team of 1992 was the worst Grand Prix team of all time. It was certainly shambolic, hopelessly unprepared, questionably funded and politically antagonistic. Almost in spite of itself, and by a discreet cheat, it did manage to qualify for that year’s Monaco Grand Prix and by the time the police arrested the owner for fraud at the Belgian Grand Prix, the worst-ever legend had been born. No so, argues the author Ian Strathcarron: it may have been awful, but there were worse and in Andrea Moda – The Legend and the Truth he not only rejoices and despairs at the story of Andrea Moda Formula but the other garagisti of the time: EuroBrun, Osella, Zakspeed, Onyx, Rial, Life, Coloni, AGS, Fondmetal and Larousse. As he concludes, it was certainly fun while it lasted.