Books by Jeremy Mark Robinson

THE SACRED CINEMA OF ANDREI TARKOVSKYBy Jeremy RobinsonA major new study of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932-1986), director of seven feature films, including Mirror, Andrei Rublev, Solaris and The Sacrifice. This book explores every aspect of Andrei Tarkovsky's output in the most detailed fashion - including scripts, budget, production, shooting, editing, camera, sound, music, acting, themes, symbols, motifs, and spirituality. Tarkovsky's films are analyzed in depth, with scene-by-scene discussions. This is an important addition to film studies, the most painstaking study of Andrei Tarkovsky's work available. Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most fascinating of filmmakers. He is supremely romantic, an old-fashioned, traditional artist - at home in the company Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Brueghel, Aleksandr Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoievsky and Byzantine icon painters. Tarkovsky is a magician, no question, but argues for demystification (even while films celebrate mystery). His films are full of magical events, dreams, memory sequences, multiple viewpoints, multiple time zones and bizarre occurrences. As genre films, Andrei Tarkovsky's movies are some of the most accomplished in cinema. As science fiction films, Stalker and Solaris have no superiors, and very few peers. Only the greatest sci-fi films can match them: Metropolis, King Kong, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Tarkovsky happily and methodically rewrote the rules of the sci-fi genre: Stalker and Solaris are definitely not routine genre outings. They don't have the monsters, the aliens, the visual effects, the battles, the laser guns, the stunts and action set-pieces of regular science fiction movies. No one could deny that Andrei Rublev is one of the greatest historical films to explore the Middle Ages, up there with The Seventh Seal, El Cid, The Navigator and Pier Paolo Pasolini's 'Life' trilogy. If you judge Andrei Rublev in terms of historical accuracy, epic spectacle, serious themes, or cinematic poetry, it comes out at the top. Finally, in the religious film genre, The Sacrifice and Nostalghia are among the finest in cinema, the equals of the best of Ingmar Bergman, Luis Bunuel, Robert Bresson and Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Contains 150 illustrations, of Andrei Tarkovsky's films, Tarkovsky at work, his contemporaries, and his favourite painters. This edition has 23 new pages of illustrations. Bibliography, filmographies and notes. Illustrated. 696pp. www.crmoon.comREVIEW:Robinson's book on the sacred cinema of Tarkovsky is one of the best on the subject. Professor Prakash Kona, English and Foreign Languages University

NUCLEAR WAR IN THE U.K. An exploration of how the United Kingdom would fare in a nuclear war. There are chapters on: nuclear politics ¿ nukespeak and 'nuclear theology' ¿ atomic bomb tests and 'accidents' ¿ American bases in the U.K. ¿ the superpowers' military programmes and strategies ¿ the cost of nuclear war ¿ British civil defence ¿ the Gulf War, 'infowar' and 'smart' technology ¿ nuclear attack scenarios ¿ and anti-war and peace initiatives. Jeremy Robinson's books include Blade Runner and the Films of Philip K. Dick, Rimbaud, Lawrence Durrell and Hayao Miyazaki. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER TWO: ¿HELL ON EARTH¿ A NUCLEAR WAR ¿WORST CASE¿ SCENARIO Here¿s how you might die in a nuclear strike. Maximum capability is about one strategic warhead hitting a target every twenty seconds. Let¿s take a one megaton air-burst scenario. At ground zero, all buildings would be destroyed. Winds of 1,000 mph. There may be an ¿echö of the blast wave (the ¿Mach¿ effect), resulting in double the over-pressure. The fireball will rise at feet/ second, expanding to 6,000 feet diameter after ten seconds. The radioactive cloud would be 3 miles high in 30 seconds. All combustible stuff would ignite, some up to 8 miles away. Air heat rises to 10,000,000° C. Heat travels outwards at 186,000 miles per second. Flesh would melt. People would die in the suffocation from the firestorm. At 1.5 miles from ground zero over-pressure is 30 times than normal atmospheric pressure. From two to five miles away, most buildings would be flattened, within 15 or so seconds. Winds of 130 mph. Clothing would ignite. Radiation sickness is inevitable. At three miles away yoüll feel a flash of light (christened the pika-don at Hiroshima); then intense heat which chars to the bone (full-thickness burns); fifteen seconds later the windows would be blown in by the blast wave; and yoüd be thrown about by the wind. First degree burns as far as 20 miles from detonation. The EMP (electromagnetic pulse) will disrupt computers, telephones, radios, radars and power supplies. Most people would be permanently blinded by the brilliant light. There are about 200 radioactive elements in fall-out. Fall-out is second-stage radiation, contaminating water, the food chain, everything. Everywhere would be a ¿Z Zone¿, a fall-out zone. Nice to know, too, that radiation is undetectable by the five senses. You may have a mortal dose and not know it. Yoüll know soon, though. Yoüre in for a party, with radiation comin¿ at ya in four types: alpha, beta, gamma and neutron. Gamma rays can penetrate several inches of concrete. Uranium and plutonium isotopes are nice, affecting bones, the respiratory tract, the liver, kidneys and lymphnodes: radiation lasts up to thousands of years. Ionizing radiation¿ll give you nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, fever, delirium, exhaustion, haemorrhages, hair loss, ulcers, anaemia and leukemia.

ZERO SUMMER: A NOVEL In Britain of the near-future, a nuclear war is imminent. As society falls to pieces, two people meet and fall intensely in love. This is a powerful erotic and poetic novel, written in a heightened, lyrical style which combines romance with action, beauty and death. EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER ONE It was on a Summer's evening that we met. Everything was full of light - the long, sloping light of Mid-West America. But in England. Into this golden light you walked. The seafront was deserted. Soft breezes blew in from the ocean. I had been living for days in the opulence of this water, this rich spice of water, heat, seagulls and wide-open spaces. Water washed our feet as we spoke on the sand. The sun was still hot. You were wearing a cotton Summer dress, white with green spots. I couldn't keep my eyes off you. The day had begun with rain, I remember. Now the sky was turning lilac. In the heat of the day the beaches had been full of tourists and sun-bathers. Now it was teatime and Great Britain shuffled indoors, to eat, to flop down, to watch TV. I was being my usual romantic self, wandering along the shore, enjoying the melancholy emptiness of the sunlit promenade. And you were there.

WESSEX REVISITED: THOMAS HARDY AND JOHN COWPER POWYS Both Thomas Hardy and John Cowper Powys created a poetic Wessex landscape. Hardy's Wessex has entered popular folklore and myth, and is used in the promotion of holidays, walks, tours, museums, hotels, even town councils. John Cowper Powys's Wessex, explored in A Glastonbury Romance, Wolf Solent, Maiden Castle and Weymouth Sands, among other novels, is less well-known: a place of secret corners, mossy walls, ancient earthworks, Somerset wetlands and ferny hollows. Both writers are discussed thematically for their sense of nature, mythology, philosophy, painting, sensualism, labour, folklore and the family. D.H. Lawrence is referenced throughout as a bridge between Hardy and Powys. Finally Jeremy Robinson considers the film versions of Hardy's novels. This is a valuable addition to the criticism of Hardy and Powys. John Cowper Powys is difficult to categorize. We place him (usually) in amongst D.H. Lawrence, Mervyn Peake, Robert Graves, William Blake and Thomas Hardy. At first glance, Powys seems to be working in the British nature poetry tradition of William Wordsworth and Edward Thomas. His immediate predecessors are Hardy and Lawrence. In Hardy;s fiction (and Emily Bronte's), one finds that fierce enmeshment of nature mysticism and character. But Powys's novels wholly lack Hardy's narrative drive and feeling for drama and development. From Hardy, however, Powys learnt how to interrelate landscape and psychology in an authentic manner. Whereas Hardy is concerned with the furtherance of the dramatic story, above all, Powys is more interested in the ecstatic states of beingness. In this Powys has much in common with Lawrence. These writers use the details found in nature as vehicles for their characters' feelings. Lawrence uses these musings to open up his text to wider issues of human emotions or politics. In Powys's work, the movement in meditation is inward, downward and backward - into the worlds of history, mythology, and the claustrophobia of the self.

LAWRENCE DURRELL This book studies the works of Lawrence Durrell (February 27, 1912 - November 7, 1990), the great British writer. It explores all of Durrell¿s major works, including The Alexandria Quartet, The Black Book, the poetry, The Avignon Quintet and the Tunc-Nunquam books, many of lesser-known pieces, and reviews all of the Durrell criticism, and Durrell¿s literary friendships (with Henry Miller, T.S. Eliot, George Seferis, Richard Aldington, etc). The response that Lawrence Durrell so often generates is negative: critics call him pretentious, baroque, overblown, high-flown, too intellectual, too metaphysical, overwritten, too rich, etc. The Avignon Quintet, his last major work, was received as ¿lush¿, with ¿fantastic characters, opulent landscapes¿, ¿flamboyant... rich, easy style¿, prose that was ¿ringingly evocative¿, ¿an elaborate tapestry¿. For some critics, Durrell¿s books are ¿accurate, moving and intensely readable¿ as a critic wrote of Bitter Lemons, while another critic sees Durrell¿s novels as ¿so beautiful in surface and so uncertain below it¿. It was the 1950s novel Justine that really launched Durrell¿s career, for Justine was a large, complex work that promised much for the following instalments in The Alexandria Quartet. Durrell¿s reputation rests largely on the achievement of The Alexandria Quartet, and it is to the Quartet that critics generally refer when they discuss Durrell. And when Durrell¿s name appears in the index of a book of literary criticism, The Alexandria Quartet is usually being considered. Includes illustrations, a full bibliography and notes.

ANDREA DWORKIN Of this study of her work, Andrea Dworkin wrote: It¿s amazing for me to see my work treated with such passion and respect. There is nothing resembling it in the U.S. in relation to my work. Michael Moorcock wrote of American feminist and writer Andrea Dworkin: ¿I think feminism is the most important political movement of our times. People think Andreäs a man-hater. She gets called a Fascist and a Nazi - particularly by the American left, but it¿s not detectable in her work. To me she seemed like a pussycat¿ She has an extraordinary eloquence, a kind of magic that moves people¿. Dworkin is a very positive writer, always driving onwards for revolution, change and radical thinking. In the introduction to Letters From a War Zone, she writes: ¿I am more reckless now than when I started out because I know what everything costs and it doesn¿t matter. I have paid a lot to write what I believe to be true. On one level, I suffer terribly from the disdain that much of my work has met. On another, deeper level, I don¿t give a fuck¿. Dworkin¿s life¿s work balances the individual suffering of the writer with the larger, worldwide suffering of women¿s subordination, so that, she says, one becomes, on a personal level, immune to pain, while on the larger, global level, the pain of women and children around the world continues to grow, and continues to make her madder and madder: ¿I wrote them [essays and speeches] because I believe in writing, in its power to right wrongs, to change how people see and think, to change how and what people know, to change how and why people act. I wrote them out of the conviction, Quaker in origin, that one must speak truth to power. This is the basic premise in my work as a feminist: activism or writing¿. Here Dworkin posits her work as a crusade, that¿s the newspaper term for her kind of polemic, a ¿crusade¿ against silence and violence, against cruelty and inequality, and certainly Dworkin is often portrayed in the media as a crusader, someone who really believes in herself, in her convictions, someone wholly committed, as few others are, to a radical change. Michael Moorcock, in his piece on Andrea Dworkin (New Statesman, 1988) writes: [w]hat she fights against, in everything she writes and does, is male refusal to acknowledge sexual inequality, male hatred of women, male contempt for women, male power¿.