My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
There’s a bookcase in the shop which is always well visited, particularly on a Saturday – it’s the Military History section. The popularity of the history of conflict has always been fascinating – what is it about State control through conflict and violence directed towards another State which so fascinates? My older brother, a former History teacher, has always been clear about the importance of history – ‘if you want to see the future, look to the past’. At this particularly momentous and sad moment in history which we are living through, there has perhaps never been a better time to understand what drives States to such desperate and cruel actions. Last year we were asked to be the booksellers at the inaugural ‘We Have Ways’ Military Festival up at Silverstone and we’ll be there again this year in a few weeks-time (see below). The popularity of this event, just like the bookcase in the shop, is a great example of why history is so important and that ignorance of the violent actions of those who have gone before will always increase the risk of such things awful happening again – ignorance has always been fuel which feeds tyranny.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
The baker Paul Hollywood seems to have the knack of taking the most simple of foodstuffs and turning into an equally simple beauty – his latest book, Bake, has been very popular and more Coles Signed Editions have arrived this week – our winners are his doughnuts and pizza!
Reading the same story from two different perspectives is always fascinating, and when those stories are memoirs from music royalty, then like most intricate Venn diagrams, rich images emerge of the entwined lives of the protagonists. Martha Wainwright is touring the UK later this month and her memoir is the perfect accompaniment to that of her father’s from a few years ago.
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