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The promotion of reading as the premier source of entertainment, excitement and empowerment is a responsibility that Penguin continues to feel proud to carry.
Ever since Allen Lane founded the company in the mid-1930s with the express intention of taking quality books to the masses, Penguin has been seen by people worldwide as the natural home of reading. In May 2003, almost half of the nation's favourite 100 books voted for in the BBC Big Read were Penguin titles.
7 July 2003, Penguin launches a campaign to encourage everyone to read more ...
Read on for full details.
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n Tolstoy's War and Peace there is a famous and rather
lovely scene where Natasha Rostov and her brother
Nikolai are invited by their 'Uncle' (as Natasha calls him)
to his simple wooden cabin at the end of a day's hunting in
the woods. There the noble-hearted and eccentric 'Uncle'
lives, a retired army officer, with his housekeeper Anisya, a
stout and handsome serf from his estate, who, as it
becomes clear from the old man's tender glances, is his
unofficial 'wife'. After they have eaten, the strains of balalaika become audible from the hunting servants' room. It is not the sort of music that a countess should have liked, a simple country ballad, but seeing how his niece is moved by it, 'Uncle' calls for his guitar, blows the dust off it, and with a wink at Anisya, he begins to play, with the precise and accelerating rhythm of a Russian dance, the well-known love song, 'Came a maiden down the street'. Though Natasha has never before heard the folk song, it stirs some unknown feeling in her heart. 'Uncle' sings as the peasants do, with the conviction that the meaning of the song lies in the words and that the tune, which exists only to emphasize the words, 'comes of itself'. It seems to Natasha that this direct way of singing gives the air the simple charm of birdsong. 'Uncle' calls on her to join in the folk dance.
What enabled Natasha to pick up so instinctively the rhythms of the dance? How could she step so easily into this village culture from which, by social class and education, she was so far removed? Are we to suppose, as Tolstoy asks us to in this romantic scene, that a nation such as Russia may be held together by the unseen threads of a native sensibility? The question takes us to the centre of this book.
Read more ... |
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