liadnan: (Default)

Some of the finest and rarest Russian wines ever to go on sale failed to sell well when they went under the hammer at auction house Sotheby's on Friday.

Well, if they're from Tsar Nicholas II and Joseph Stalin's cellars one doubts whether much of them will be any good by now. And I bet they're corked.

But I was reading recently, I forget where (TLS or LRB possibly) about luxury markets in a recession. In the case of rare books the market took a while to fall after Black Tuesday in 1929 but once it went it stayed down longer. Moral: those signed first impression JKR's may not be such a sound investment after all.

Currently reading Robert Irwin's The Arabian Nights: a companion. Brilliant.

Therefore [ie because of the stylistic differences between Arabic and European languages] only a half-wit or a liar would claim that it was possible to produce a complete and faithful word-for-word translation of the Nights, simply changing the Arabic letters into European ones; but, as we shall see below, Mardrus made this claim for his [French] translation.

Nothing to do with that, but read Keiran Drum on Crooked Timber on the admissability in US military tribunals of evidence gained under torture. Also Ogged on Unfogged. Read it and weep.

Edited to add: to cheer you up Former TV chat show host and European MP Robert Kilroy-Silk has had a bucket of farm slurry thrown over him in Manchester..

Yes, I am drinking at home on my own. Why do you ask?

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liadnan

February 2022

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