Tickets, $20. At the Goethe-Institut, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036. Ample free street parking, as well as parking under the building. For reservations, email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com, or click here.
There will always be an England. Simon Winchester, internationally respected bestselling author of such great works of non-fiction as The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa: The Day The Earth Exploded, and so many others, is an author whose fascination with science makes for some terrific books for even readers who are not generally inclined to read about geology or geo-politics all over the world. Winchester makes his stories jump off the page, infusing his work with unbelievably thrilling narratives about the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities which drive the people who have changed the way we look at the world. Many of those wildly eccentric people in his books are scientists. Some of the more interesting people in his books are English. Such is the case with Winchester’s new book on skulls. Titled Skulls: An Exploration of Alan Dudley’s Curious Collection, the book is more than a beautiful collection of photographs by Nick Mann. It is, after all, written by Simon Winchester. We learn why a guy named Alan Dudley,whose day job involves beautiful wood veneer in pricey English automobiles, has a collection of more than 2,000 skulls of animals, birds and reptiles in a spare room in his home. We cannot ignore his impressive array of stuffed and taxidermied birds and animals as well.
The photographs of the skulls are fascinating and beautiful, to be sure. Be the first on your block to learn the difference between the skulls of a vervet monkey and a tufted gray lemur, or a wattled hornbill and a wrinkled hornbill. Even if you thought you never cared, this is a window into wildlife that most of us never think about. Alan Dudley is certainly a bit odd, but he has inspired Simon Winchester to give us a glimpse of a strange and wonderful sort of suburban catacombs for wildlife in the heart of the English Midlands, and how they relate to our time and place. But it is Winchester’s narrative about the uses of skulls in religion, in pop culture, in art, and in pseudoscience that gives heart and soul to this brainy subject. In conversation with screenwriter Ken Nolan (Black Hawk Down), who has been a Simon Winchester fan since reading The Professor and the Madman.
Tickets, $20. At the Goethe-Institut, 5750 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles 90036. Ample free street parking, as well as parking under the building. For reservations, email us at reservations@writersblocpresents.com, or click here.