More from Books

Saturday

Anne Applebaum

A far-fetched war

First, a disclaimer: this review will not touch upon some recent, odd behaviour of this book’s author, Orlando Figes, because I can’t see that it’s relevant. First, a disclaimer: this review will not touch upon some recent, odd behaviour of this book’s author, Orlando Figes, because I can’t see that it’s relevant. The history of the Crimean war is far removed in time and in space from contemporary literary politics, and I think we should keep it that way. Second, an unexpected fact. Although the Crimean war is also far removed in time and space from contemporary American politics, while reading this excellent book I could not help but marvel at the many parallels with the present.

Byron Rogers

Laughter from the Gallery

This is an amiable book. The parliamentary sketchwriter Simon Hoggart, also the wine correspondent of this magazine, for which he drinks as selflessly as Zorba the Greek, has set out to record anecdotes that have amused and appalled him in the course of his long professional life. He also throws in some, mainly Jewish, jokes whenever the mood takes him, so at times this reads like one of those gag books that professional comedians lose, then loudly appeal in the press for the return of, but it is none the worse for that. This is a book you are meant to read, put down, read, and put down. It is very readable. But one thing it isn’t is an autobiography.

Robert Chandler

An open and shut case

Harvey Pitcher has been translating Chekhov and writing about him for much of the last 40 years. His earlier publications include a book about Chekhov’s plays and a portrait of Chekhov’s wife. His Chekhov: The Comic Stories (Deutsch, 1998) is the best translation of the still undervalued early stories. The present volume is a discussion of Chekhov’s work and life as a whole, but with a particular focus on the later stories. Harvey Pitcher has been translating Chekhov and writing about him for much of the last 40 years. His earlier publications include a book about Chekhov’s plays and a portrait of Chekhov’s wife. His Chekhov: The Comic Stories (Deutsch, 1998) is the best translation of the still undervalued early stories.

Saturday

Sam Kitchener

BOOKENDS: A Tiny bit Marvellous

Criticising Dawn French feels like kicking a puppy. She’s so winning that the nation was even tempted to let The Vicar of Dibley slide. Criticising Dawn French feels like kicking a puppy. She’s so winning that the nation was even tempted to let The Vicar of Dibley slide. The same is true of her debut novel, A Tiny Bit Marvellous (Michael Joseph, £18.99), which has its heart in the right place, in spite of reading as though it’s jumping up and slobbering over your trousers.

Gary Dexter

Alternative Reading: Passion Bum

Robert Silverberg is the great 20th-century pioneer of science fiction, the multiple Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning author of books such as Nightwings and Lord Valentine’s Castle. Robert Silverberg is the great 20th-century pioneer of science fiction, the multiple Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning author of books such as Nightwings and Lord Valentine’s Castle. What few know, however, is that he is also the super-prolific author of scores of soft-porn pulp titles under pseudonyms such as John Dexter, Don Elliott and Loren Beauchamp.

Cressida Connolly

Cross Country Guide

This is a book which, along with a packet of extra strong mints, deserves a place in the glove compartment of every car. This is a book which, along with a packet of extra strong mints, deserves a place in the glove compartment of every car. Any motoring trip into the British countryside, any hillside picnic or stroll will be made the more interesting with The Shell Country Alphabet to hand. In these pages you can find out about singing sand, church architecture and fossils. You may learn that heart burial was common in the Middle Ages, that marine luminescence causes ‘herrings to glow on a plate in a dark larder’ (the book was written in the 1960s, when dark larders were still ubiquitous), that a blackthorn winter is a cold snap in late March.

Philip Hensher

Two of a kind

They were ‘soulmates’ according to people who knew both of them. They were ‘soulmates’ according to people who knew both of them. The word has a double-edged quality; it may suggest that they got on well together because they presented such a problem to everyone else. Both Philip Larkin and Monica Jones found it difficult to suffer fools gladly, and in this collection of letters (ranging from 1946-84) from Larkin to his long-term companion and lover, the mean-spirited and misanthropic are given full rein. Larkin met Jones in 1946, and they soon became lovers. (So much for sexual intercourse beginning in 1963). She was a flamboyant presence in the English Department of Leicester University, remaining a junior lecturer until her retirement in 1981.

Paul Routledge

Not good enough

Tony Blair gave his record in government ten out of ten, though an ungrateful electorate scored rather less well and his Cabinet colleagues performed even worse. Sadly, they were ill-equipped to grasp his unique qualities of leadership. Milord Peter Mandelson reached broadly similar conclusions. Their instant apologia are meant to be the last word on the subject, living obituaries on 13 years in power. So what are we to make of the verdict of New Labour’s two most respectable cheerleaders, who offer a ‘not good enough’ six out of ten for their government’s performance? Toynbee and Walker (they sound like an old-established firm of country solicitors — ‘very reliable, y’know’) are not persuaded.

Matthew Dennison

Pass the cheese, Louise

Widowhood in 1955 was not a desirable state. Not, at any rate, for Louise Bickford, heroine of The Winds of Heaven (first published in 1955, now reprinted by Persephone). Louise is 57. She has a small, inadequate income from her parents. From her ghastly husband Dudley she has inherited nothing but debts. She has lost her house and all her possessions, save a few clothes, and with them her way of life, her identity and her place as an adult invested with those attributes. In middle age, she has been downgraded to second chilhood. None of which is her fault. Within the parameters of Monica Dickens’s mid-century, middle-class world, such is the inevitable result of financial ruin and dependency. At a time of economic uncertainty, this is a troubling suggestion for readers today.

Anthony Cummins

Taking a firm line

This book collects nearly 300 examples of Alasdair Gray’s work as a painter and illustrator. This book collects nearly 300 examples of Alasdair Gray’s work as a painter and illustrator. As an art student in 1950s Glasgow, he scorned the conservatism of tutors who painted the way ‘Monet might have painted had he been timid and Scottish, with an inferior grasp of colour and design’. Instead of traditional still lifes and landscapes, he produced devious biblical scenes populated with weird and sinewy figures inspired by Blake, Breughel and Bosch.

Charlotte Hobson

Out of time and place

The misleadingly titled Life of an Unknown Man is in fact the story of two men, and the dualities that their characters embody — fame and anonymity, unhappiness and happiness, West and East. The misleadingly titled Life of an Unknown Man is in fact the story of two men, and the dualities that their characters embody — fame and anonymity, unhappiness and happiness, West and East. Like Andrei Makine himself, the protagonist, Shutov, is a middle-aged Russian emigré author living in Paris. His powers, both sexual and literary, are slipping away from him, and his sense of failure is minutely and rather brilliantly dissected in a parade of petty humiliations, ridiculous outbursts and painful internal dialogue.

John Preston

Ready for take-off | 23 October 2010

In the recently published Oxford Book of Parodies, John Crace clocks up five entries, thus putting him just behind Craig Brown as our Greatest Living Parodist. Crace may not have quite Brown’s range, but for the last 10 years his ‘Digested Reads’ have been reason enough to buy the Guardian. Taking a well-known novel, he gives a brief distillation of the plot while capturing — often perfectly — the tone of its author. At the same time, he jabs a sharpened elbow into their pomposities and limitations.

Johnny Grimond

Not going forward

This is a brave book, quixotic even. Simon Heffer, an associate editor of the Daily Telegraph, believes English has a settled framework of grammar that is today often ignored. He deplores the growth in numbers of those who know nothing of correct usage and good style. Now he means to educate them. Every one of us who gasps at the use of English in the papers each morning or harrumphs on turning on the radio will find much to applaud. In recent days I have recoiled at ‘Me and my family will do well’ (in The Times), ‘Sweden PM wins second term’ (Financial Times), ‘the deficit will reduce rapidly’ (FT again) and ‘in practice, they fall between cracks’ (International Herald Tribune). Every reference to the Liberal Democrat Party makes me wince.

Marcus Berkmann

Dancing with admirals and painted ladies

Everyone loves butterflies. Of course we do. Possibly more than any other living thing, they represent to us the terrible fragility of life, the knowledge that however colourful and attractive we may all be, something or someone really unpleasant is waiting around the next corner to smash our face in. This may be why butterfly collectors, men who love butterflies but nonetheless seem compelled to poison them, attach them to bits of cork board and stuff them in a drawer, have become a byword for weirdness and perversity. Who would kill the one you love? As countless TV thrillers have shown, only a complete loon. Fortunately, mainstream entomology has moved on since Victorian times, and indeed since John Fowles wrote The Collector.

John R. MacArthur

Groupthink and doubletalk

Soon after his historic victory over John McCain, Barack Obama was ushered into a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) located deep inside the Federal building in Chicago to receive his first top-secret intelligence briefing as President-elect. According to Bob Woodward, the Watergate icon and Washington journalism grandee, the space was designed to prevent eavesdropping and thus ‘unusually small . . . windowless and confining, even claustrophobic’.

Ian Birrell

That turbulent decade

On 2 January, 1980, a new decade was ushered in with a strike by steelworkers. It was their first national stoppage for half a century, and after three tense months they were rewarded with a 16 per cent pay rise. Once again, a strike seemed to pay off, with weak managers sacrificing long-term gain to avoid short-term pain, whatever the costs ultimately to their industry or to the economy. But then, in a clear sign that the Eighties were going to be rather different to the tortured decade that had preceded it, the Government sacked the chairman of British Steel. He was replaced by a tough Scottish-born banker from Wall Street called Ian MacGregor, who immediately began challenging the old order and slashing the workforce.

Saturday

Interconnect

BOOKENDS: The Diary of a Lady

On the evidence of Rachel Johnson’s latest book (Penguin/ Fig Tree, £16.99), Julia Budworth, the owner of The Lady, was wrong in her recent accusation that the magazine’s editor is obsessed with penises. Johnson is far too busy talking about testicles. She tells her immediate boss (Mrs Budworth’s son Ben) to ‘grow a pair of balls’. She admits later that he has ‘cojones you can see from space’. She calls one article ‘cobblers’. On the evidence of Rachel Johnson’s latest book (Penguin/ Fig Tree, £16.99), Julia Budworth, the owner of The Lady, was wrong in her recent accusation that the magazine’s editor is obsessed with penises. Johnson is far too busy talking about testicles.

Allan Massie

Less is more | 16 October 2010

'A good rule for writers: do not explain over-much’ 'A good rule for writers: do not explain over-much’ (Somerset Maugham: A Writer’s Notebook). Like most of what he had to say about the craft of writing, this was good advice, although he didn’t always follow it himself. Even in his best stories he was inclined to tell you quite a lot about his characters before showing them in action or letting us hear them speak. Breaking his own rule worked well for him, because one of the charms of his writing rests in the knowledgeable man-of-the-world tone. You always feel that he is giving you the low-down on human nature. Still, leaving things out is usually a good idea.

Andrew McKie

Almost everything came up roses

There’s a number in Merrily We Roll Along called ‘Opening Doors’, in which two young songwriters audition for a producer who interrupts: ‘That’s great! That’s swell!/ The other stuff as well!/ It isn’t every day I hear a score this strong,/ But fellas, if I may,/ There’s only one thing wrong:/ There’s not a tune you can hum.’ Urging them to be ‘less avant-garde’, he exits, asking for a ‘plain old melodee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee’ — sung (inaccurately) to the tune of ‘Some Enchanted Evening’. There’s a number in Merrily We Roll Along called ‘Opening Doors’, in which two young songwriters audition for a producer who interrupts: ‘That’s great!

Peregrine Worsthorne

Cleared on all counts

Since the main purpose on earth of the Conservative party was, and still should be, to keep Britain’s ancient and well-proven social and political hierarchy in power — give or take a few necessary upward mobility adjustments — Harold Macmillan must rank very high in the scale of successful Conservative prime ministers; just below Benjamin Disraeli, whose skill in sugaring the pill of inequality and humanising the face of privilege is never likely to be bettered. Earlier biographies of Macmillan, blinded by the egalitarian zeitgeist, have never done justice to this particular dimension of his genius, preferring to see his successful manoeuvring to pass the torch on to a 14th earl as an anachronistic blunder rather than a masterstroke. To his credit, D. R.