Castles & Palaces in Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and Swabia by Michael Weithmann and Wilfried Bahnmüller
This travel guide provides fascinating details that help you to learn something beyond just castles’ pretty walls. All the biggies are featured—Munich’s Residenz, Nymphenburg, Neuschwanstein and Linderhof—but also Burghausen on the Salzach (Europe’s longest castle), the Grünau Pleasure Palace (built in 1530 and dedicated by a duke to his wife) and Falkenstein über Pfronten (King Ludwig II’s planned post-Neuschwanstein site, which was never realized). The book is divided into sections covering Upper Bavaria, Lower Bavaria and Swabia. Each site has an information box featuring opening hours, directions, parking information and dining tips, as well as nearby attractions that can be incorporated into your visit. The Passau section, for example, covers not only the history and architecture of the town’s castle, but also goes on to explain that the Generalsgebäude and smithy are now home to a youth hostel and restaurant. Nearby is a replica of a trebuchet, a medieval machine that uses counterweight technology to catapult rocks (or burning missiles) up to 300 m. Didn’t you always wonder how they did that? Although Weithmann is a historian and Bahnmüller holds a doctorate in scientific photography, the text and images are educational without being overly academic.
On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
Released in June 2007, Ian McEwan’s latest novel, On Chesil Beach, has been shortlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize. No pressure though, the British novelist already has won the award—for Amsterdam—in 1998. Atonement and Saturday are two other novels for which he is well-known, and On Chesil Beach builds on his ten-book string of success. As only McEwan can do, he skillfully immerses his readers in the intimate lives of his protagonists. This time, we are introduced to two newlywed virgins consumed by post-nuptial fears. Almost as quickly as Edward, a history student, and Florence, a musician, settle into a Dorset hotel in 1962, we learn that even intercourse will be a complicated and deeply emotional tangle for this pair. In those first hours of their marriage McEwan gives us the history of all they ever were and, somehow, a view of all they might be in the future. A skillful submersion into another period.
