Ian Hamilton (1) (1938–2001)

This is yet another excellent pocket-size walking guide from Vertebrate Publishing. It includes a variety of walks to suit all abilities and, being familiar with all but a couple of them, I can attest to the accuracy of the route descriptions. The directions for each walk are clear and easy to follow (details of the relevant OS Explorer 1:25,000 map are included) and highlight points of interest along the way. Distance, total ascent, type of terrain, where to park, local amenities and where to find refreshments are all included.
The short introduction to the walks highlights the literary connection, encouraging the walker to see the landscape through the eyes of the authors and to understand the influence it had on their writing, thus adding an enjoyable extra dimension to the walk. Each walk comes with suggested reading, offering a wonderful 'excuse' to either re-visit some old favourites or to discover some new ones.
I like the fact that all these guides include the Country Code, recommendations of what to wear, how to walk safely and details of how to get help in the event of an accident.
Highly recommended.… (altro)

This is essential reading for anyone interested in British poetry. In my view, however, reading this book without any prior information, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ian Hamilton was not a poet - just a psychopath. He published so little because his poems aren't poems, they are instruments of control: means through which to simultaneously lure in women to control and men to adore him for it, seeking his judgement and approval of their own masculinity performances. He reveals nothing about himself but returns repeatedly in his poems to blame the female figure for taking distance and ending their relationships - while simultaneously indulging in witnessing 'her' suffering, though leaving it purposefully ambiguous whether that caged suffering is described for enjoyment or concern. Indeed, ambiguity that allows the audience to read in their aspirations at the outset, and stay trapped for lack of clarity about the trap, is a lovely technique of the sadist: get the victim to do your work for you. Never discussed, however, are the things he's done to drive her away. We learn nothing about him, and the focus is always on her, her faults, and his positioned objectivity.

Important work with which to be familiar: 'the movement' and all that. But insidiously upsetting, if you get too close to it.… (altro)

“The present book is an attempt to animate certain key moments, or turning points, in Arnold’s passage from the poetic life to the prose of his later years.”

The above is a very honest statement quoted from the book’s preface. Ian Hamilton is not trying to pull over the reader’s eyes by suggesting that his book is the complete and definitive life of Matthew Arnold.
This stamp of honesty is ingrained throughout the book, within his style of writing, his objectiveness and his refraining from turning the biography into a hagiography.
Ian Hamilton has created a remarkable piece of work. It is made even more remarkable as it appears Arnold did not leave behind a bounty of diaries, letters etc from which a biography could be constructed.
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Wordsworth, Browning and Tennyson, Arnold has all but been forgotten, his poetry no longer fashionable, consigned to be a poet only enjoyed by scholars.
While Arnold’s poetry never had the emotional charge of Wordsworth or the introspective humanity of Tennyson, it did have a grace and a force of nature. While the poetry of his contemporaries had all the beauty and style of a supermodel, Arnold’s poetry was the beauty of the soul, the person within not the external superficial beauty that one could tire of looking at.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach

Ian Hamilton does a great service to the memory of Matthew Arnold with his insightful, intelligent and penetrating analysis of Arnold’s verse. Hamilton shows us the development of Arnold’s poetry and as such puts that work in context biographically and historically.
If there is one thing that a biography of a poet’s life should try to attain is to have the reader want to read or reread the poetry of the biographer’s subject.
Arnold turned his back on the world of poetry to concentrate on prose during the last twenty or so years of this life. The nineteenth century and beyond was a poorer place because of this decision.

“He thrust is gift in prison till it died” W.H. Auden.… (altro)

This is the book that made life difficult for biographers. Not that Ian Hamilton intended to do so. But his use of Salinger's letters became the tipping point for the reclusive author, who sued the biographer. In an unfortunate ruling Harold Baer virtually destroyed the idea of fair use for unpublished writing. Congress has since rectified the judge's decision but not before that decision had a chilling impact on the publishing industry. Hamilton turns his thwarted book into a kind of Search for Corvo, which is a clever biography but also an example of a desperate biographer who discovers he does not have enough reliable data. Hamilton's book is not in the same league as Search for Corvo, but you learn a good deal about the nature of biography and something as well about J. D. Salinger. Harold Baer, by the way, is at it again--this time making it difficult for authors who are scanned by Google. Is someone out there writing a book about Harold Baer's worst decisions?… (altro)