For years an intimate friend of my mother Rachel Cecil, Frances Partridge inhabits my memory from early childhood. Before she reached 50, her dark, delicate skin was already seamed with a thousand wrinkles like a very old woman’s, although she remained youthful all her prodigiously long life, retaining an acute power of sympathy. She would
As a general rule, I do not believe in reviewing bad books. Review space is limited, and the many good books that are published deserve first claim on it. But climate change is such an important subject, and — thanks to heavy promotion by that great publicist, Tony Blair — the Stern Review of the
South Africa’s Brave New World: The Beloved Country since Apartheid, by R. W. Johnson After the Party: Corruption and the ANC, by Andrew Feinstein I am writing this in Cape Town on the very day that Jacob Zuma is exonerated of all charges of corruption, racketeering and money-laundering — not by a judge, but by
There is only one politician who has emerged from the recession with his reputation enhanced. Yes, you’ve guessed right: I’m referring to Vince Cable, the ubiquitous grey-haired, sober-suited deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats. Even many Tories would feel reassured were Cable, who exudes reasonableness, to become Chancellor; broadcasters with little understanding of finance defer
Alain de Botton recently said that he’d been congratulated on his prescience for writing a book about the nature of work in these times of economic woe. But he wasn’t prescient, he said — just interested in the subject. He has been pondering it for several years now, in his specific, de Botton-esque style, which
Translated to Borsetshire, John Constable’s courtship of Maria Bicknell would provide more material than any script editor could handle without straining audience impatience beyond endurance. Nine years it took, from initial yearnings and tacit engagement to get them to the altar at St Martin-in-the-Fields and even then, in October 1816, it was the quietest of
Ask Alice combines two narratives, one beginning in 1904 in the emptiness of the American Midwest, the other in the muffled stasis of Edwardian rural England. The first follows the swift trajectory of Alice, a pretty orphan from Kansas who thinks ‘it must be fun to go places’. Alice, on the train shuttling between one
An apocryphal housemaster is asked, on the occasion of his retirement, how he intends to fill his days. ‘Gibbon,’ he replies, succinctly. Real-life housemasters might now answer ‘Sumption’. Such is the intimidating length and fine detail of Jonathan Sumption QC’s history of the Hundred Years War. Divided Houses is the third volume. The Hundred Years
In this illumination from Henry’s VIII’s Psalter, the young David prepares to confront Goliath. In this illumination from Henry’s VIII’s Psalter, the young David prepares to confront Goliath. Dressed in Tudor costume, he wears a soft black hat with a white feather brim, similar to that worn by Henry in the famous Holbein portrait in
An earnest young man upbraids his singing teacher. ‘Why don’t you sing classical more often?’ It is Bombay in the early Eighties. The young man’s father has enjoyed a successful career in management, with the result that ‘his childhood had been almost entirely chauffeur-driven’. His singing teaching, peddling remarkable gifts to earn an unremarkable living
When, 15 years ago, Nicola Beauman embarked on this life of ‘the other Elizabeth Taylor’, the novelist and not the film star, she had been deprived of documents that would certainly have been of tremendous use to her. These were the letters that, over a period of some three decades, Taylor wrote regularly and at
The Old Boys’ Network, by John Rae At Westminster School, under the shadow of Big Ben and at the very centre of national life, 600 of the brightest, quirkiest and most stimulating boys and girls in the country spar with teachers of similar character. Results are spectacular. The difficulty for the headmaster, however, is that
A combination of art history ‘lite’ and the personal touch — a common yoking together these days, even in books supposedly of art history ‘full strength’ — makes for, in Philip Hook’s hands, an engaging read. As a dealer and auctioneer, and the author of several thrillers, he has advantages not given to the general
In The Frenzy of Renown, Leo Braudy’s magisterial study of fame and its history, he identifies the principal allure of being a celebrity: ‘In the heart of the fan and the famous alike, fame is a quiet place where one is free to be what one really is, one’s true, unchanging essence.’ The belief that
Margaret MacMillan’s Peacemakers deservedly attracted the highest praise. It was illuminating and a compelling read. Equally, her Women of the Raj evoked the lost world of the memsahibs — courag- eous, often narrow and intolerant, but dauntless as they nearly always were. Now, from her eminence as Warden of St Anthony’s College, Oxford, she stands
How do you write an autobiography without referring to almost anyone else in your life? In The Pattern in the Carpet, Margaret Drabble has done just that, using her interest in jigsaw puzzles to create a ‘hybrid’ book, part memoir, part history. The device allows Drabble to reveal more about herself than any exposé or
Every so often American Presidents let people know that they are reading a book. When George W. Bush was seen clutching a copy of Andrew Roberts’s History of the English Speaking People, acres of newsprint appeared on this elegant apologia for neo-conservatism. Now his successor in the White House wants us to know that he
Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, by Tim Knox, photographs by Derry Moore Sir John Soane’s Museum is very nearly a folly — a mad grotto in the midst of Georgian London. It is clearly the monument of someone both eccentric and egocentric. What saves it from being Hearst Castle, Liberace’s palace or Michael Jackson’s Neverland,
Khomeini’s Ghost, by Con Coughlin The Life and Death of the Shah, by Gholam Reza Afkhami The fall of the Shah of Iran at the beginning of 1979 took the world by surprise. A self-confident autocrat, supported by a large, American trained and equipped army and a ubiquitous and powerful security service, he was driven
A friend who belongs to an old-fashioned London club tells me that all anecdotes related within its walls are met with one of only three accepted responses: Great Fun, Rather Fun and Shame. Stanley I Presume is rather fun. It would have been great fun if the author was less discreet and less loyal and