I realised later that if I read about them in a different book I may not have been so interested. Probably we will only listen to facts from people we like. It has been described as a travel book, but I don't think that's entirely accurate, though there are a few scattered sections that could be described as travel writing. The premise is that Maugham long planned to write an historical novel set during Spain's Golden Age. He traveled extensively and read 200-300 books on the subject, but was never able to get the book past the initial planning stage. William Somerset Maugham, famous as novelist, playwright and short-story writer, was born in 1874, and lived in Paris until he was ten. He was educated at King's School, Canterbury, and at Heidelberg University. He spent some time at St. Thomas' Hospital with a view to practising medicine, but the success of his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published in 1897, won him over to letters. Of Human Bondage, the first of his masterpieces, came out in 1915, and with the publication in 1919 of The Moon and Sixpence his reputation as a novelist was established. His position as a successful playwright was being consolidated at the same time. His first play, A Man of Honour, was followed by a series of successes just before and after World War I, and his career in the theatre did not end until 1933 with Sheppey.

An authentic New Mexico experience awaits at Hotel Don Fernando de Taos, Tapestry Collection by Hilton. Located on six and a half scenic acres in Taos, NM, our hotel features Southwestern architecture, charming casita-style accommodations and decorative artwork and tapestries by area artists to create a unique and locally inspired place to stay. Families, couples, skiers, hikers and travelers looking to explore this relaxed, eclectic city enjoy a central location near Taos’s classic Pueblo buildings, world-class museums, quirky cafés and superb restaurants. Anyone else who spots something suspicious can always report it to our Customer Service team, so our Fraud team can investigate. An oddly rambling book which begins like a novel with a wonderfully atmospheric opening chapter regarding tavern owner, Don Fernando, selling the storyteller a book. But from then on we’re all over the place.The section on El Greco and Cervantes were real eye openers. He speaks a lot about how art just for admiration means nothing unless the beholder’s emotion translates into doing great things ( .... probably for others I guess ). Contributions should be travel related. The most helpful contributions are detailed and help others make better decisions. Please don’t include personal, political, ethical, or religious commentary. Promotional content will be removed and issues concerning Booking.com’s services should be routed to our Customer Service or Accommodation Service teams. Though elsewhere in the chapter Maugham hails El Greco as great, he attributes what he perceives to be El Greco's flaws to his supposed homosexuality, saying that a homosexual is generally not capable of making great art, because he is essentially superficial, with an incomplete knowledge of the human condition. He cannot create great art--he can merely draw pretty decorations. This is why, for example, Maugham thinks El Greco's religious paintings are devoid of any true religious feeling--they are just excuses for him to draw elongated bodies, experiment with posing the hands, and paint dramatic clouds with lovely colors.

Don Fernando," then, is a loose collection of observations on Spain in general, and especially Spain in the Golden Age. Maugham discusses food, architecture, painting, literature, the practice of writing, drama, mysticism, Catholicism, the Spanish obsession with honor, picaresque novels, and such figures as St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Teresa of Avila, Cervantes, and Lope De Vega.It begins, living up to its title, with a memory of Don Fernando, a tavern-keeper whom Maugham had encountered in his first visit to Spain - who also had worked out a side business as a dealer of curios and antiques. One day, Fernando sold Maugham an ancient-looking manuscript that turned out to be a history of none other than Saint Ignatius of Loyola and his life and struggles and ultimate triumphs that established his reputation as a Jesuit priest across the world. Somerset Maugham is my favourite author, but this is very untypical. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to someone new to Maugham, in fact, I wouldn’t recommend it at all! I found it to be Maugham's weakest book - in fact it's so all over the place as to be little more than an unfocused notebook. Going from there, Maugham sets out to unravel and explore not only Loyola's life and sacraments but also a whole legacy of Catholicism that is unique primarily to Spain. And even beyond that, he digs deeper into the dazzling cultural influence that the country exerted at the same time of Loyola's heyday - through a candid, fairly concise and profound commentary on its traditions of "machismo" and bravado, its food and its earthy exoticism, its picaresque literary tropes, as evident in its most famous work of literature "Don Quixote", its rambunctious form of theatre, its women and its art, all in the height of their glory in their respective Golden Age. It was really not what I expected and I started to wonder what is meant by a travel book. For most of this book Maugham is taking the part of a critic of both literature and art of the golden age of Spain. For the literature he gives a summary of the writing and then critiques it. For the paintings he does concentrate largely on El Greco which does give rise to an astonishing passage where he discusses the suggestion that El Greco was gay. Well, what to say? Sometimes you can excuse things by saying "well in those times...." but he goes as far as to say that it is not possible to be gay and a genius. Don Fernando (born April 12, 1948) is a director and actor of pornographic films. He started in the pornography business in 1977 and performed for 39 consecutive years; the longest tenure for any male pornographic film actor in the world, until his retirement in 2016. Because of his high libido and sexual endurance during his performances in adult film and video productions on 3 continents, he was known in the United States and Europe as "Mr. Reliable", and in Japan as "Superman of Video Sex". As a director, he specialized in performing with Asian females, and earned the moniker "Asianman". He won the Best Supporting Actor Award twice (1995 [ citation needed] and in 2005) during the Festival de Cine Erotica-Barcelona [1] Fernando was inducted into the X-Rated Critics Organization Hall of Fame in 1997. [2] He was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame during the 2004 AVN Awards. [3] Other Awards and Inductions [ edit ]