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Slightly Foxed > An Index to Slightly Foxed > Chapman, Caroline

Chapman, Caroline

articles by, [2] 60; [9] 67; [38] 45

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20040601174446

Hadrian to the Life

Caroline Chapman on Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian

My first encounter with Memoirs of Hadrian was during a brief holiday in Andalusia. As I drove north from Málaga into the snow-covered hills, my husband turned to the first page. Within a sentence we were transported into the second century ad; a few pages later we realized we were traversing the very same landscape Hadrian had known as a boy. It was in the hills and forests around Seville that he learned to ride and to hunt: ‘The kill in a Spanish forest was my earliest acquaintance with death and with courage.’
20060301161841 Caroline Chapman on Percy FitzPatrick, Jock of Bushveld

Top Dog

Caroline Chapman on Percy FitzPatrick, Jock of the Bushveld

As the years advance I’ve become increasingly aware of the books I read as a child that have exerted an influence on my life. Would I have just returned from my fourth tramp through the African bush, for example, had my imagination not been fired by a vivid account of the bond that developed between a man and his dog as they hunted big game in the South African veld? Among the many seeds sown in my childhood, Jock of the Bushveld fell on richly fertile ground.

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