The Mad Pomegranate & the Praying Mantis: An Andalusian Adventure

The Mad Pomegranate & the Praying Mantis tells the story of a playwright who went to Spain to make a film about the poet Federico Garcia Lorca. He made the film and stayed on in Andalusia with his wife and five children for another ten years. When the playwright, Peter Luke (1919-95), had a West End success with one of his stage plays, Hadrian VII, he bought an almond, lemon and olive farm. His Andalusian way of life suggested parallels with that of Publius Vergilis Maronis, the Virgil of the Bucolics and the Georgics, and Peter Luke, through his carefully selected and beautifully presented description, admits us to share his own arcadian experience. The Mad Pomegranate & the Praying Mantis is an apologia for bucolic man in an increasingly urbanised world, and the author conveys his pleasure in this world in a manner that will delight the reader, however urbanised.