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The elephant and the Polish question
'Our finest living essayist. Maurice Craig's exquisite collection... is at once literary, erudite and mechanical: poppet-valves and cams, Yeats's inability to spell, bookbindings and motor-car design, the Tichborne scandal and airships, raised foc's'les and the particularity of certain words - all glide before his mind, all entrance, and all find an elegant home in his essays.'
- Kevin Myers, The Irish Times
'This is a remarkable book... Craig writes entertainingly about a multitude of people.'
- Hubert Butler, Irish Independent
Part meditation, part autobiography, part exploration, part miscellany, The Elephant and the Polish Question is the distillation of a literary life of more than forty years. Owing something to Trivia, the Notebooks of Samuel Butler, and Norman Douglas, it touches on many subjects about which the author has thought but not hitherto had the chance to write, from coincidences to funerary customs, from book-collecting to ship-design, and from prose style to the art of trespass.
Snapshots of childhood, friends and personalities blend with reflections on education, music, architecture, the decay of travel, the evolution of language, and much besides. Maurice Craig seeks the hidden links between his recurrent preoccupations, occasionally bringing to light a facet of something that looks like - and may even be - truth. Anecdotal and analytical by turn, the author is resolute in retrospect, believing that only the past is knowable.
There are vivid set-pieces such as the obsequies of William Butler Yeats, visits to No. 10 Downing Street and other notable buildings, and the undeservedly little-known vicissitudes of the Druce-Portland Case. While himself incapable of consciously telling an untruth, the author proves himself a connoisseur of forgery and imposture. He has, in a back-handed sort of way, enjoyed life its contradictions and discontinuities. The reader who is prepared to follow him, or to browse at his own pace, will be rewarded.
MAURICE CRAIG is the foremost authority on Ireland's architectural history. His many books include The Volunteer Earl, a biography of Lord Charlemont, Dublin 1660-1860, an architectural history, Irish Bookbindings 1600-1800, The Life of James Gandon, Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size, and Mausolea Hibernica.
- Kevin Myers, The Irish Times
'This is a remarkable book... Craig writes entertainingly about a multitude of people.'
- Hubert Butler, Irish Independent
Part meditation, part autobiography, part exploration, part miscellany, The Elephant and the Polish Question is the distillation of a literary life of more than forty years. Owing something to Trivia, the Notebooks of Samuel Butler, and Norman Douglas, it touches on many subjects about which the author has thought but not hitherto had the chance to write, from coincidences to funerary customs, from book-collecting to ship-design, and from prose style to the art of trespass.
Snapshots of childhood, friends and personalities blend with reflections on education, music, architecture, the decay of travel, the evolution of language, and much besides. Maurice Craig seeks the hidden links between his recurrent preoccupations, occasionally bringing to light a facet of something that looks like - and may even be - truth. Anecdotal and analytical by turn, the author is resolute in retrospect, believing that only the past is knowable.
There are vivid set-pieces such as the obsequies of William Butler Yeats, visits to No. 10 Downing Street and other notable buildings, and the undeservedly little-known vicissitudes of the Druce-Portland Case. While himself incapable of consciously telling an untruth, the author proves himself a connoisseur of forgery and imposture. He has, in a back-handed sort of way, enjoyed life its contradictions and discontinuities. The reader who is prepared to follow him, or to browse at his own pace, will be rewarded.
MAURICE CRAIG is the foremost authority on Ireland's architectural history. His many books include The Volunteer Earl, a biography of Lord Charlemont, Dublin 1660-1860, an architectural history, Irish Bookbindings 1600-1800, The Life of James Gandon, Classic Irish Houses of the Middle Size, and Mausolea Hibernica.
278 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1990
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November 27, 2023
A memoir of growing up in England and Ireland and essays by the Irish writer and historian Maurice Craig published in 1990. Such is the range of topics touched on in this book that the publisher allowed the index to stretch on to the back of the book where are listed, among others: Freud, Sigmund, victuals intended for; Fur Hur accent, the; Gordon, General, his sister; and genealogy, lack of interest in.
The book ranges among stories of travel, history, law, books, etc. and tells its tales with humour verging, sometimes, into ascerbic wit:
"Legends about [Arland Ussher] were numerous. The one I like best is that during post-war inflation in Germany the local value of his share of his mother's meagre pension was such that was able to hire a brass ban to march in front of him through the streets of Berlin. I am so attached to this story that I have been at some pains not to verify it."
"Jaundice is a very convenient illness because it exempts you from being a blood-donor for ever afterwards: I recommend it."
The book is full of great anecdotes about cities and countries that will make you want to jump on the next plane to see them:
"According to the Youngs in their book on Old London Churches, 'A mummied person with a pleasant smile is kept in a cupboard in the vestry' of St James Garlickhithe."
"Awe is an emotion which I have not felt very often. I remember most vividly feeling it when I first set eyes upon the triple serpent in the At Median at Constantinople..."
And, of course, Craig makes many references to numerous other books that you'll want to read.
A delight.
The book ranges among stories of travel, history, law, books, etc. and tells its tales with humour verging, sometimes, into ascerbic wit:
"Legends about [Arland Ussher] were numerous. The one I like best is that during post-war inflation in Germany the local value of his share of his mother's meagre pension was such that was able to hire a brass ban to march in front of him through the streets of Berlin. I am so attached to this story that I have been at some pains not to verify it."
"Jaundice is a very convenient illness because it exempts you from being a blood-donor for ever afterwards: I recommend it."
The book is full of great anecdotes about cities and countries that will make you want to jump on the next plane to see them:
"According to the Youngs in their book on Old London Churches, 'A mummied person with a pleasant smile is kept in a cupboard in the vestry' of St James Garlickhithe."
"Awe is an emotion which I have not felt very often. I remember most vividly feeling it when I first set eyes upon the triple serpent in the At Median at Constantinople..."
And, of course, Craig makes many references to numerous other books that you'll want to read.
A delight.
Displaying 1 of 1 review