The Outpost: a Homeric world of warfare

At dawn on 3 October 2009, Camp Keating, a vulnerably exposed US Army outpost in Afghanistan’s Nuristan Province, within the Hindu Kush mountain range, came under sustained attack from Taliban fighters. The brutal, close-contact fighting would last all day. It was, recalled one who was there, like ‘fighting from the bottom of a paper cup’. By its end, what became known as the Battle of Kamdesh saw eight of the defenders dead, 27 wounded and up to 200 Taliban killed. Two men, Staff Sergeants Clinton Romesha and Ty Carter, were awarded the Medal of Honor, America’s highest award for valour. The Outpost, a 2019 film directed by Rod Lurie and adapted from Jake Tapper’s unflinching telling of the tale, is a visceral, purportedly accurate, and certainly terrifying reimagining of that day of unimaginable horror. Sometimes one simply looks away. But, Homeric in its unerring depiction of grisly battle, it is an essential if harrowing experience.

Io Pur Respiro

Something more gentle. The Austrian pianist Elias Stemeseder and American bassist Thomas Morgan are one of the most compelling pairings in contemporary music. Their latest offering, Io Pur Respiro, recorded live in Florence, opens with a piece inspired by the Neapolitan Baroque composer Carlo Gesualdo, a sort of musical Caravaggio, both in his commitment to contrasts of light and shade, and in his shady personal life. ‘Madrigal, Variation, Courante’ glides between counterpoint and pointillism, displaying remarkable empathy between the two performers. Fans of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett will appreciate their interpretation of Billy Strayhorn’s standard ‘Love Came’ as well as ‘I Have the Room Above’ from the musical Showboat. The final track, Stemeseder’s ‘Subject Carved from Words Uttered’, creates a musical world largely their own, but with tinges of Lennie Tristano – compliment enough.

The tragedy of the Habsburgs

The historian AJP Taylor was a wilful provocateur, but, at his best, he was an eloquent master of his subject. Never more so than with his classic The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, published, significantly, in 1941, when Britain had been abruptly and dramatically woken from the slumbering failure of appeasement and the perils of acting against its empire’s fundamental interest. His account of the Habsburg tragedy tracks how a noble enterprise, apparently deep rooted, unpicked itself by reforming what it didn’t need to reform while failing to make the changes that would sustain its existence. A fascinating argument for the importance to political leaders of honesty and courage – two virtues always in short supply – and the perils of contingency.