History
Neal Ascherson
Black Sea
11:30am | Friday 14 September 2012Tickets: | Duration: | Venue: |
£N/A | 1 Hour | Blenheim Palace: The Indian Room |
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This was an Oxford Literary Festival 2012 Event.
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Journalist Neal Ascherson launches a new partnership between The Folio Society and Blenheim Palace Literary Festival with a talk on his latest book about the history and importance of the Black Sea shores.
Ascherson was travelling through the area in 1991 when a group of Communist conspirators seized Mikhail Gorbachev at his summer home in the Crimea. Far from leading to a renewal of hardline Communist rule, the incident eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ascherson says he was made aware of the importance of the Black Sea region, where East meets West. In Black Sea, he takes the reader on a tour of the region, where East meets West, recounting its earliest history, how the poet Ovid was exiled to its shores, and Byzantium times when caviar was so abundant it was considered a poor man’s food. Black Sea, which combines personal narrative with a historian’s insight, is also the story of a modern ecological disaster with the once abundant beluga, sturgeon, anchovy and dolphins at record lows.
Ascherson has worked for the Guardian, The Scotsman, the Observer and The Independent on Sunday. He has lectured and written extensively about Polish and Eastern European affairs.
The Folio Society, founded in 1947 by Charles Ede, produces beautiful, illustrated editions of the world’s greatest books. The emphasis is on combining the work with high-quality typography, printing, binding, illustration and expert introductions to produce a harmonious whole. It has published a huge range of works from Moby-Dick to Midnight’s Children and from the Qur’ân to Kerouac’s On the Road.
The price for this event includes a glass of wine.