Darwin’s Sacred Cause, by Adrian Desmond and James Moore Darwin: A Life in Poems, by Ruth Padel In 1858, on the brink of publishing his theory of evolution, which I discussed here three weeks ago, Charles Darwin took a hydropathic rest cure at Moor Park, near Farnham in Surrey. While walking on the sandy heath,
Why Us?, by James Le Fanu The past half-century has seen the most astonishing concentration of scientific discoveries in history. In physical terms, from the Big Bang to the Double Helix, our understanding of the universe, of life and ourselves has been extended with an intensity and on a scale that may never be repeated.
M. R. D. Foot confesses that he has always endeavoured to follow Whistler’s counsel, ‘Not a day without a line’. His written output is impressive and his judgments severe on those who do not come up to his standards. Heinz Koeppler, his boss at a Foreign Office study centre, with his fawning on his superiors
Is this map of birds’ migratory routes informative or deceptive? Does it create the impression that nature is flourishing when it is really in decay? In today’s golden age of cartography, when technology has lifted mapmaking to an unprecedented level of sophistication, The Natures of Maps wants to be a party-pooper. Maps, it declares, pretend
The Companion to British History (Third Edition), by Charles Arnold Baker Readers familiar with the first edition of The Companion to British History (Loncross, 1997) will already know that its value as a reference work proceeds from an inclusive attitude towards its subject. Besides providing the rudiments — monarchs, battles etc — the CBH was
Memoirs? No one writes them any more. If you wish to distinguish yourself from the sweaty masses, you are far better off publishing a diary, or notebook, call it what you will (Frederic Raphael naturally calls it a cahier). To publish one, of course, you need to have written one, ideally some years ago, full
Senior civil servants are generally expected to be shadowy figures, influential rather than powerful, discreet rather than flamboyant, probably — in Gladwyn’s generation at any rate — educated at Winchester. To describe such a being as a Titan might seem an oxymoron. The Titans, it will be remembered, were a family of giants who had
The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford Robert Burns: A Biography, by Patrick Scott Hogg How to account for the phenomenon of Robert Burns? Not the man or his poetry, but the national icon, a Caledonian amalgam of Alexander Pushkin and Bob Marley? The process of idolisation began with the instant acclaim that
Ruth Rendell’s Kingsmarkham series is set against the changing backdrop of a provincial town over more than 40 years. But her London-based books, though they lack recurring characters and locations, almost amount to a series in their own right. She has made the city her own, and writes with both knowledge and compassion about its
The Sisters Who Would Be Queen, by Leanda de Lisle Only recently a portrait minature by Lavina Teerlinc was identified as being of Lady Jane Grey. Her diminutive size, coiffed red hair and crimson lips had suggested that it might be her — except that the eyes are blue, while Jane’s were known to be
Empires of the Indus, by Alice Albinia When Alice Albinia set off for the source of the Indus she was not embarking on a quest for the unknown: she knew where the river rises. She wanted to start her journey at its mouth, the delta on the Arabian Sea, to travel upstream to Tibet and
Love’s Civil War: Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, Letters and Diaries from the Love Affair of a Lifetime edited by Victoria Glendinning, with Judith Roberts It is probable that the Anglo-Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was a virgin ten years after her marriage to Alan Cameron, the retired Secretary to the Central Council of School
The Writer as Migrant, by Ha Jin Three quest-ions, labelled as ‘Aristot- elian’ by the author, begin the Rice University Campbell Lectures delivered by Ha Jin in 2007: to whom, as whom, and in whose interest does a writer write? To which the reader might respond: can any writer truthfully answer any of these questions?
2666, by Roberto Bolaño Not every writer would write a novel in the form of a completely invented encyclopaedia of imaginary writers and call the result Nazi Literature in the Americas. Not everyone, either, would write a novel in two paragraphs, the second less than 12 words long, or produce a novel about a torturer-poet
The Dog: 5000 Years of the Dog in Art, by Tamsin Pickeral Dogs: History, Myth, Art, by Catherine Johns The Horse: A Celebration of Horses in Art, by Rachel and Simon Barnes These three books are concerned with the representation in art of man’s most successfully domesticated wild animals,: the dog and the horse. Dogs,
On Kindness, by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor Whenever I say to someone that I do not believe that there is a universal human right to healthcare, that person always asks whether, then, I want to see people dying in the street from treatable disease. I in turn ask that person whether he can think
The Outlander, by Gil Adamson The Outlander, a strikingly good first novel by the Canadian poet Gil Adamson, is a drama of extremity and isolation set in the Rocky Mountains of Canada in the early 1900s. Much of it reads like a pastiche Western with elements of supernatural grotesquerie out of Stephen King or even
Journals: 1952-2000, by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, edited by Andrew Schlesinger and Stephen Schlesinger Before sitting down with this hefty doorstopper of a diary, first ask yourself whether you agree — or can imagine yourself agreeing — with the entry Arthur Schlesinger, Jr made on 27 March 1950: ‘I adore sitting around hotel rooms with politicians
Byron in Love, by Edna O’Brien ‘We would entreat him to believe that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is necessary to constitute a poem,’ wrote Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh Review, when the young Byron was unwise enough to expose his first, dismal book of juvenilia to the gaze of ‘Citizen Mob’,
Evelyn Waugh told Nancy Mitford he was ‘surprised to find’ that Proust ‘was a mental defective. He has absolutely no sense of time.’ Evelyn Waugh told Nancy Mitford he was ‘surprised to find’ that Proust ‘was a mental defective. He has absolutely no sense of time.’ (Joke, given the novel’s title?) ‘He can’t remember anyone’s