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ليدي آن بلنت السيرة الذاتية
ليدي آن بلنت حفيدة الشاعر البريطاني الشهير اللورد بايرون الوحيدة كانت من أهم الرحّالة في القرن التاسع عشر. رافقت زوجها في رحلته إلى العراق والجزيرة العربية ودخلت حائل في عهد إمارة الأمير محمد بن عبدالله الرشيد وسجلت مذكراتها الشهيرة التي لا تزال تعتبر من أهم المصادر التاريخية عن تلك الفترة. كان اهتمامها بالخيل العربية الأصيلة والتي كان اصطبلها الأول في حائل. تمكنت من نقل الحصان والفرس التي أهداها إياها إبن رشيد من تأسيس السلالة العربية التي تعتبر من أهم ممتلكات ملكة بريطانيا اليوم. كانت الليدي آن رسامة وشاعرة كما كانت محبة للعالم العربي وأنهت حياتها في مصر حيث توفت ودفنت. الكاتب ونستون أول من ألّف ترجمة لحياتها نال عليه الإعجاب... هذا بعض ما قالته الصحف العالمية عن الكاتب. الكتاب يستحق القراءة والكاتب متمكن من الموضوع ومن حرفته. لا تدعوا الكتاب يفوتكم "The Spectator". لا يستطيع القارئ إلقاء الكتاب جانبًا متى بدأ في القراءة. ونستون كاتب متمكن وقد استطاع أن يؤلف "Western Morning News" كتابًا شيّقًا ينصف فيه هذه المرأة العبقرية. لوحات ليدي آن والتي يحتويها الكتاب تعود بنا إلى بغداد والبصرة وجبل شمر... أماكن نسمع بها الآن يوميًّا في الأخبار "The daily Telegraph". لقد كانت الليدي آن هناك قبل أي امرأة أوروبية والكتاب سجل حافل بمغامراتها. الليدي آن تستحق كتابًا من هذا النوع الفاخر والذي لم يدخر فيه الكاتب جهدًا في البحث والتنقيب في سجلات التاريخ "Supplement Times Literary". نقول له برافو ونقول لكم لن تندموا على قراءة هذا العمل الرائع.
- GenresBiography
327 pages
First published January 1, 2003
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June 13, 2020Sexist beyond belief
December 9, 2017
I have mixed feelings about this book. It was extremely well written and impeccably researched, it was exactly what I needed for the research for my own current book, yet ultimately as a biography it simply failed to hold me.
Poor Lady Anne Blunt, what an appalling life she led in many ways. I really admire HVF Winstone for his attempt to reclaim her from both her notorious antecedents and her utterly, completely, revolting husband. The granddaughter of Byron, Lady Anne was more or less abandoned by her mother Ada Lovelace, obsessed by mathematics, gambling and consumed by a horrible slow-killing cancer, to be raised and heavily influenced by her grandmother, Lady Byron. Moral, upright, a prig and a hypocrite, Lady Byron did her best to influence Anne in every possible wrong way. It's a tribute to Anne's own personality that she managed to escape, if not unscathed, at least with a strong moral character of her own. Sadly though, she married William Blunt, a man in his own words dedicated to pleasure, who had so many lovers that I completely lost count.
Forced to admire his stamina and persistence if nothing else, I found myself skimming over quite a lot of this biography devoted to William's sexual antics out of sympathy for Anne and repugnance. At times, between William's bed-hopping and the Blutn's wide social circle, the book read like a Who's Who of the Victorian world. Oscar Wilde was one of poet William's mates, and it's testament to William's morality that after the notorious court case, he tried to marry his young daughter Judith off to Wilde's erstwhile lover Bosey. (More testament, if you need it, is in William's determined seduction of his daughter's best friend.)
What I was interested in was the Crabbet Arabian Stud, the couple's travels in Arabia, and their acquisition of horses. There's lots of this, and it's fascinating if you're interested - I confess, were it not for my own book, I probably would not have been. The descriptions of the desert from Anne's diaries are beautiful though, you get a real sense of the magic spiced with danger of her travels. Sadly not enough for me. I would definitely have liked less society shenanigans and more desert.
As a biography rather than a piece of research, the other thing I think this book lacked was opinion. The author cannot quite hide his contempt for William, but William was so very contemptible, I felt that he could have shown a great deal more. Anne is very flawed, her family history and the Byron scandal of whether he did or did not have an incestuous affair with his half-sister haunted Anne, defined his wife and his only legitimate child, Anne's mother. They were seriously, seriously screwed up, but there's very little of this in the book - and I don't think that makes me screwed up wanting to read it, but I do like a little speculation, a little psychology with my biography.
On saying that, this was an interesting enough read to keep me turning the pages long after Anne had left Arabia. And a nice feed in to my next bit of research on Gertrude Bell, who makes her own appearance in this book towards the end of Anne's life. I do like a bit of syncronicity.
Poor Lady Anne Blunt, what an appalling life she led in many ways. I really admire HVF Winstone for his attempt to reclaim her from both her notorious antecedents and her utterly, completely, revolting husband. The granddaughter of Byron, Lady Anne was more or less abandoned by her mother Ada Lovelace, obsessed by mathematics, gambling and consumed by a horrible slow-killing cancer, to be raised and heavily influenced by her grandmother, Lady Byron. Moral, upright, a prig and a hypocrite, Lady Byron did her best to influence Anne in every possible wrong way. It's a tribute to Anne's own personality that she managed to escape, if not unscathed, at least with a strong moral character of her own. Sadly though, she married William Blunt, a man in his own words dedicated to pleasure, who had so many lovers that I completely lost count.
Forced to admire his stamina and persistence if nothing else, I found myself skimming over quite a lot of this biography devoted to William's sexual antics out of sympathy for Anne and repugnance. At times, between William's bed-hopping and the Blutn's wide social circle, the book read like a Who's Who of the Victorian world. Oscar Wilde was one of poet William's mates, and it's testament to William's morality that after the notorious court case, he tried to marry his young daughter Judith off to Wilde's erstwhile lover Bosey. (More testament, if you need it, is in William's determined seduction of his daughter's best friend.)
What I was interested in was the Crabbet Arabian Stud, the couple's travels in Arabia, and their acquisition of horses. There's lots of this, and it's fascinating if you're interested - I confess, were it not for my own book, I probably would not have been. The descriptions of the desert from Anne's diaries are beautiful though, you get a real sense of the magic spiced with danger of her travels. Sadly not enough for me. I would definitely have liked less society shenanigans and more desert.
As a biography rather than a piece of research, the other thing I think this book lacked was opinion. The author cannot quite hide his contempt for William, but William was so very contemptible, I felt that he could have shown a great deal more. Anne is very flawed, her family history and the Byron scandal of whether he did or did not have an incestuous affair with his half-sister haunted Anne, defined his wife and his only legitimate child, Anne's mother. They were seriously, seriously screwed up, but there's very little of this in the book - and I don't think that makes me screwed up wanting to read it, but I do like a little speculation, a little psychology with my biography.
On saying that, this was an interesting enough read to keep me turning the pages long after Anne had left Arabia. And a nice feed in to my next bit of research on Gertrude Bell, who makes her own appearance in this book towards the end of Anne's life. I do like a bit of syncronicity.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews