Tales from the life of Bruce Wannell - Adventurer Linguist Orientalist

Barnaby Rogerson, Rose Baring

Summary

Bruce Wannell was the greatest Orientalist traveller of his generation: a Paddy Leigh Fermor of the East, a Kim for our time. He lived through the Iranian Revolution, worked for a decade in the North West Frontier during the wars in Afghanistan, could transcribe the most complex Arabic calligraphy by sight and spoke Iranian and Afghan Persian with a dazzling, poetic fluency. His curious combination of talents – linguist, musician, translator and teacher – were duplicated by an international network of friendships with scholars, poets, spies, aid-workers, archaeologists, diplomats, artists and writers. Bruce could quote Hafez from memory, rustle up a lethal cocktail, lose himself in Brahms, open any door, organise a concert within days of arriving in a foreign city or walk across a mountain with just walnuts and dried mulberries in his pocket. He was a true original, remembered here with affection, humour and wonder by over eighty of his friends and collaborators.

Available since: 09/01/2020.

Print length: 331 pages.

Other books that might interest you

Ballad for Baghdad - An...

Ali Elizabeth Turner

“Want to know the real story of the war in Iraq? This is it. I love this book!” (New York Times–bestselling author Lt. Col. Robert “Buzz” Patterson)   In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Ali Turner was a fully committed anti-war protestor. Caught up in the wave of aggressive activism that swept through the nation’s college campuses Ali, in her own words, “passionately wanted to see America destroyed.” Decades later, she was stirred to action once again. This time as a fierce supporter of the military, living in a combat zone in an increasingly unpopular war.   From 2004 to 2007, Ali had the chance of a lifetime to atone for the past and say a belated “thank you” for her freedom by working in Morale, Welfare, and Recreation centers in Baghdad. She heard the courageous and compassionate stories of hundreds of Iraqis, Coalition soldiers, Navy SEALS, interpreters, Army Rangers, and contractors from around the world. She was in Baghdad for the return of Iraq to the Iraqis, three Iraqi elections, and Saddam’s trial and execution.   An inspiring new perspective on Operation Iraqi Freedom, Ballad for Baghdad is an “endearing and spiritual story about self-redemption” written by a woman on an unforgettable, three-year odyssey on the frontlines (Major Sean Michael Flynn, author of The Fighting 69th).

Show book

Finding Emily Dickinson in the...

PBS NewsHour

Who was Emily Dickinson? A new exhibition at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York takes a closer look at the iconic American cultural figure through her poems and the remnants of her life, and finds a less reclusive woman than we thought we knew. Jeffrey Brown reports.

Show book

Brian Little - A Little Is Enough

Simon Goodyear

On leaving school in 1969, Brian signed as an apprentice for Aston Villa who had just been relegated to the Third Division for the first and only time in their history. He made his senior debut on 30 October 1971, in a 4 – 1 win over Blackburn Rovers at Villa Park. In that same season, he also helped Villa win the FA Youth Cup. He was part of Villa's League Cup winning teams of 1975 and 1977 and scored two goals in the second replay victory over Everton in the 1977 final. Brian helped the club climb from the Third to First Division in the early part of the decade, scoring 20 league goals in the 1974 – 1975 season when they were runners-up and clinched promotion to the First Division. His starring roles earned him his first (and only) cap for the full England team in a substitute appearance against Wales at Wembley in May 1975.
By the 1979 – 1980 season, Brian was a regular in the Villa side, but one year later, just before Villa's victorious 1980 – 1981 season, his career ended prematurely because of a knee injury, after making 302 appearances for his one and only club, scoring 82 goals in all competitions and having a clean disciplinary record to boot.
Although his playing career was over, Brian remained on the Aston Villa payroll as youth team coach. When manager Tony Barton was sacked in the summer of 1984, Little's contract was also terminated and he became first-team coach of Wolverhampton Wanderers, before embarking on a hugely successful managerial career.
Brian Little will be known as a flamboyant forward who formed a particularly prolific partnership with John Deehan and Andy Gray. He is regarded as an all-time great at Villa Park, and in 2007 he was named as one of the 12 founder members of the Aston Villa Hall of Fame.

Show book

Somewhere Inside - One Sister's...

Laura Ling, Lisa Ling

Somewhere Inside is the electrifying, never-before-told story of Laura Ling’s capture by the North Koreans in March 2009, and the efforts of her sister, journalist Lisa Ling, to secure Laura’s release by former President Bill Clinton. This riveting true account of the first ever trial of an American citizen in North Korea’s highest court carries readers deep inside the world’s most secretive nation while it poignantly explores the powerful, inspiring bonds of sisterly love.

Show book

The Fisherman and His Soul

Oscar Wilde

To get what we want is often the greatest curse of all. The fisherman here accidentally catches a mermaid in his net. He falls in love with the Mermaid and tells her that he wants to marry her. She tells him that he can only marry her if he sends away his soul. From a Witch, the Fisherman learns how to send his soul away. The Soul makes several attempts to persuade the Fisherman to take him back, eventually convincing him to do so with the tale of a beautiful dancer who lives nearby. Too late does the Fisherman discover that the soul which he sent out into the world without a heart has become evil. So be careful what you set your heart on. This story was first published in 1896 in the book A House of Pomegranates.

Show book

Winter

Karl Ove Knausgaard

The second volume in his autobiographical quartet based on the seasons, Winter is an achingly beautiful collection of daily meditations and letters addressed directly to Knaugsaard's unborn daughter 
2 December - It is strange that you exist, but that you don't know anything about what the world looks like. It's strange that there is a first time to see the sky, a first time to see the sun, a first time to feel the air against one's skin. It's strange that there is a first time to see a face, a tree, a lamp, pajamas, a shoe. In my life it almost never happens anymore. But soon it will. In just a few months, I will see you for the first time. 
In Winter, we rejoin the great Karl Ove Knausgaard as he waits for the birth of his daughter. In preparation for her arrival, he takes stock of the world, seeing it as if for the first time. In his inimitably sensitive style, he writes about the moon, water, messiness, owls, birthdays-to name just a handful of his subjects. These oh-so-familiar objects and ideas he fills with new meaning, taking nothing for granted or as given. New life is on the horizon, but the earth is also in hibernation, waiting for the warmer weather to return, and so a contradictory melancholy inflects his gaze. 
Startling, compassionate, and exquisitely beautiful, Knausgaard's writing is like nothing else. Somehow, he shows the world as it really is, at once mundane and sublime.

Show book