For three years, Bill Nesto's dream of becoming a certified master of wine was vanquished by test problems like this: "In the context of wine, briefly explain meta-tartaric acid." Nesto's wine-bibbing friend and study partner Sandy Block was also thwarted in his...

The last of the vintage wine QUICKSANDS: A MEMOIR by Sybille Bedford Hamish Hamilton, £20, pp. 370, ISBN 0241140374 £18 (plus £2.25 p&p) 0870 800 4848 When Sybille Bedford was born, in Germany in 1911, it was into a world already vanishing: a...

The Last of the Wine (1956) is an excellent historical novel by all the standards which we usually use to judge such work. Miss Renault's reconstruction of the past is vivid and exciting, for she has been able to make us believe in a world remote from ours, but one in which we recognize problems and people who reflect our own society. The Athens of Sokrates and Alkibiades comes alive for us because Miss Renault has made it consistent, colorful, and interesting. But unlike many historical novelists wh...

[The] less inhibited cousin [of the historical novel], the legendary romance—a freer form because it is by nature exempt from the restrictions of historical fact—is no less honorable and may offer even more in the way of inventive and persuasive entertainment. Mary Renault's evocations of the Greek past, starting with "The Last of the Wine" (1956), are admirable examples of this genre, perhaps the best we have…. [In "The King Must Die"] an act of schol...

[In The Last of the Wine] Miss Renault gives us both sides of the coin, the very special and precious relationship that could exist between men who were lovers, and the pathetic lot of Athenian women of good family, who could aspire to nothing higher in life than playing the role of housekeeper and brood mare. Writers too often have looked at this dazzling age through rose-colored glasses. Miss Renault sees the shadows as well as the highlights…. [She shows us] the people who once prided themselves o...