Shakespeare’s Faces
Everyone knows Shakespeare’s iconic portrait from the First Folio (1623), but I’ve never much liked it. There are others…
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How the Bard Won the West
How the Bard Won the West (Smithsonian Magazine, August, 1998). “Sometime in late 1863, a tall thin man rode out of an Army camp…”
Read MoreHow the Bard Won the West: Back Story
In the summer of 1997, I drove 1200 miles around the American West looking for Shakespeare, on assignment from the Smithsonian Magazine…
Read MoreThe Turkish Bath by Ingres
Ingres’s painting of luxuriant nudity began as an awareness of absence. As a young man, the painter read Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s dream of unscarred skin…
Read MoreLady Mary in Pictures
Before her bout with smallpox Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was a famously beautiful woman. She was painted many times, before and after…
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About My Blog
Occasional musings about stories, history, art, ideas, and the adventures of a writer's life...
