Sailing to Byzantium by Osbert Lancaster

Sailing to Byzantium by Osbert Lancaster

Their hotel was beautifully situated, high on the northern slope of the huge artificial mound known as the Paneuim that was sacred to the goat-fed God. From here they had a total view of the city: the wind noble Boulevards, the soaring obelisks and monuments, the palace of Hadrian just below the hill, the stately and awesome Library, the temple of Poseidon, the teeming marketplace, the royal lodge that Mark Antony had built after his defeat at Actium. And of course the Lighthouse, the wondrous many-windowed Lighthouse, the seventh wonder of the world, that immense pile of marble and limestone rising in majesty at the end of its mile-long causeway. Black smoke from the beacon-fire at its summit curled lazily into the sky. The city was awakening.

It looked like the past, on Earth. But times had changed. and changed. and changed.

There were ghosts and chimeras and phantasies everywhere about. Two slim elegant centaurs, a male and a female, grazed on the hillside. A burly thick-thighed swordsman appeared on the porch of the temple of Poseidon holding a Gorgon's severed head and waved it in a wide arc, grinning broadly. In the street below the hotel gate three small pink sphinxes, no bigger than housecats, stretched and yawned and began to prowl the curbside. A larger one, lion-sized, watched warily from an alleyway: their mother, surely. Even at this distance he could hear her loud purring Sailing to Byzantium received the 1985 Nebula award for science fiction novella.

Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986) was a painter, a writer, a cartoonist, a theater designer, an authority on architecture and design, and above all a great British humorist. His pocket cartoons depicting the aristocratic Maudie Littlehampton, her family and friends, which appeared in the Daily Express for 40 years, recorded in his inimitably English way the life, news, and opinions of the period. His books on architecture and design were as witty as they were authoritative: in them he depicted buildings and interiors with an unerring instinct for the minutiae of stylistic change and recreated with irrepressible humor the way of life of the original inhabitants.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780719527159
ISBN 10	0719527155
Title	Sailing to Byzantium
Author	Osbert Lancaster
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Hodder & Stoughton General Division
Year published	1972-07-06
Number of pages	196
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.