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Tag Archives: Balkans
Field of the Blackbirds
In Black Lamb and Grey Falcon they have now reached the Kosovo Polye (or Polje), aka “Field of the Blackbirds” – the scene of the defeat of the Serbs against the Turks in 1389. Losing at Kosovo Polye meant centuries … Continue reading
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: an excerpt
This is part of the chapter I read this morning. I’ve got a ton of thoughts about it all, but I’m not sure how to put it into words. In this excerpt, Rebecca West and her husband stop at a … Continue reading
Sarajevo, 1914
This morning I finished the chapter in Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon about the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in the streets of Sarajevo in June, 1914. Now, the book is amazing, in pretty much every way (content, writing-style, … Continue reading
Rebecca West on Croatia
Excerpt from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: Well, what did all this story mean to the people in Croatia, the people I was looking at, the people who had been selling me things? I had come to Yugoslavia because I … Continue reading
“But now Luckeni is Mussolini”
Excerpt from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: More on the killing of the King of Yugoslavia: I knew, of course, how and why the murder [of the King of Yugoslavia] had happened. Lucheni [the Italian assassin who killed Express Elizabeth … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, politics, Rebecca West, war, Yugoslavia
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The assassination of the King of Yugoslavia
Excerpt from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The assassination of the King of Yugoslavia in Marseille, which Rebecca West hears about from her sick-bed in the hospital, is what triggers her second visit to the Balkans. She knows she MUST … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, politics, Rebecca West, war, Yugoslavia
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Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West
On Black Lamb and Grey Falcon – about Rebecca West’s travels through Yugoslavia in 1937. The length of the book was what originally kept me from launching into it, even though so many people who I admire love Rebecca West, … Continue reading
20th Century Czechoslovakia
The 20th century This is mercilessly long. Just a little heads-up. But it is such a great story. Post World War I… World War I ended with the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and the Czechs, free at last, won … Continue reading
The Czech Republic
Things stay the same in the Czech Republic (or Bohemia, or Czechoslovakia, or whatever name it is known by), for a long long time. Centuries sometimes. And then – suddenly – everything collapses, spectacularly, in a matter of 2 weeks. … Continue reading
Focus on Croatia
Zagreb Rebecca West’s classic travelogue of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, begins at the railway station in Zagreb, Croatia, 1937. Robert Kaplan, following her trail in 1989, begins his book Balkan Ghosts at the same railway station. In 1918, … Continue reading
Posted in Miscellania
Tagged Balkan Ghosts, Balkans, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West, Robert Kaplan
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