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Brother Mendel's Perfect Horse
Brother Mendel's Perfect Horse
Oct 16, 2024 8:23 PM

Author:Frank Westerman,Sam Garrett

Brother Mendel's Perfect Horse

' "When you touch a Lipizzaner, you're touching history," Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof' Financial Times

Frank Westerman explores the history of Lipizzaners, an extraordinary troop of pedigree horses bred as personal mounts for the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Following the bloodlines of the stud book, he reconstructs the story of four generations of imperial steed as they survive the fall of the Habsburg Empire, two world wars and the insane breeding experiments conducted under Hitler, Stalin and Ceausescu.

But what begins as a fairytale becomes a chronicle of the quest for racial purity. Carrying the reader across Europe, from imperial stables and stud farms to the controversial gene labs of today, Westerman asks, if animal breeders are so good at genetic engineering, why do attempts to perfect the human strain always end in tragedy?

Reviews

"When you touch a Lipizzaner, you’re touching history,” Westerman was once told. His elegant book offers fascinating proof

—— Carl Wilkinson , Financial Times

Westerman's own unique process of hybridisation, his mix of travel writing and history, yet again proves a winner… enquiring and thoughtful

—— Lucy Scholes , Independent

A masterpiece

—— De Standaard

A most charming book

—— Allan Mallinson , The Times

A winner...enquiring and thoughtful

—— Independent

Westerman’s account of the Lipizzaners’ remarkable survival makes stirring reading. His tales of research in secret archives and encounters with wartime veterans who helped with Operation Cowboy have the subterfuge and tension of a thriller

—— Jane Shilling , Sunday Telegraph

Fascinating

—— Caroline Moorehead , Literary Review

Westerman offers a reflective account of man’s obsession with the prized Lipizzaner horse

—— Sunday Telegraph

Westerman’s tale, part historical journey, part travel tome, takes the reader across Europe to explore every avenue of the Lipizzaner’s eclectic history

—— Good Book Guide

Absorbing

—— Daily Mail

A glorious read!

—— Mojomums

A splendid pontine read.

—— Londonist

A delightful and informative romp.

—— Richard Boon , N16

As a chronicle of social and architectural history, this is an informative and fun read

—— Bookbag

Tindall transforms bricks and mortar into fascinating social history

—— Christopher Hirst , Independent

The interest here lies in the accurate and plausible portrait of a whole society, from top to bottom… The details are fascinating

—— Guardian

The avowed aim of this fascinating history of neighbours is to explore the delicate balance between people’s determination to protect their privacy and their simultaneous wish to cultivate contact with those who live close by

—— Good Book Guide

A very personal encounter with Roman Britain… Invites us to see our landscape and history as the Romans first imagined and wrote about them – strange and exotic islands, perched on the edge of the known world.

—— UK Regional Press

[Higgins] is as sharp and sensitive an observer of the latest version of Britannia as she is of the earliest one… Each chapter is not just a regional itinerary but also a brilliantly constructed and often exhilaratingly poetic treatment of wider themes.

—— Emily Gowers , Times Literary Supplement

Records [Higgins’] own travels around the island in search of Roman traces. She includes plenty of anecdotes about the continuing fascination with the Roman past and its penetration of the present.

—— Oldie

Higgins produced another remarkable British travelogue… that was at once thoughtful, learned, witty and superbly written.

—— William Dalrymple , Observer

Filled with passion and personal interest… Higgins walks us around the landscape of this country as it would have been 2,000 years ago, and in doing so she ably captures the spirit of Britain now, Britain then and Britain in between.

—— Dan Jones , Telegraph

Whether at Hadrian’s Wall or in a car park in the City, she [Higgins] shows how Roman traces are woven through British life.

—— Financial Times

A fascinating look at how we have viewed Rome's presence in these islands and what a debt we still owe to Roman achievements.

—— Good Book Guide

Part history, part travelogue, [Higgins] also brings to life the eccentric archaeologists who have tried to recapture that lost civilisation.

—— Robbie Millen , The Times

A fresh and readable account

—— Fachtna Kelly , Sunday Business Post

Under Another Sky is not only a work of personal history, it is more personal than that... It is conversational, anecdotal, in a way that makes it easy for [Higgins] to slip in quite a lot of information

—— Nicholas Lezard , Guardian

A delightful, effortlessly engaging handbook to the half-lost, half-glimpsed world of Roman Britain... The result is an utterly original history, lyrically alive to the haunting presence of the past and our strange and familiar ancestors

—— Christopher Hart , Sunday Times

The beauty of this book is not just in the elegant prose and in the precision with which [Higgins] skewers her myths. It is in the sympathy she shows for the myth-makers.

—— Peter Stothard , The Times

Evocative...a keen-eyed tour of Britain.

—— Christopher Hirst , Independent

Packed with fascinating and thought-provoking insights.

—— Herald

A captivating travelogue.

—— Helena Gumley-Mason , Lady

A delightfully heady and beautifully written potpourri of a book.

—— BBC History Magazine

A fascinating look at the debt we owe to Roman achievements

—— Good Book Guide

One of those fantastical novels that tells us more about the realities of being human than most realist novels do…the most thrilling and moving experience fiction has to offer this year.

—— TIME (Top 10 Fiction Books of Year)

Kate Atkinson's audacious novel plays a virtuoso game with the nature of fiction...her best book to date and a worthy winner of a Costa Prize.

—— Daily Telegraph
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