‘Have you your next book in mind?’ ‘Not yet, I can’t fix on a subject,’ my friend replied. ‘What about Ouida?’ I said. Actually this exchange has taken place a couple of times, and on each occasion my suggestion was received without enthusiasm. Perhaps it was thought patronising: Victorian romantic novelist, suitable subject for a
A man whose personal life contains as many potentially unflattering episodes as V. S. Naipaul might easily have been resistant to the idea of biographical scrutiny. In fact, however, Naipaul has shown himself remarkably hospitable to the idea. In 1994 he went so far as to say: ‘A full account of a writer’s life might
Philip Ziegler reviews a collection of history essays To invite 20 eminent historians to describe the world-changing event in history which they most wish they had witnessed is an ingenious publishing idea likely to produce an entertaining and even modestly instructive book. Happy evenings could be spent around the dinner table debating the choices and suggesting
This is a book so remarkable that after finishing it you will find yourself casting the film that will surely get made. Kevin Myers, a young freelance Irish journalist — James Nesbitt, he of the Yellow Pages and Pontius Pilate; Pastor Oliver Cromwell Whiteside, a Protestant fundamentalist preacher who speaks throughout in the accents of
One of the difficult tasks when writing fiction about the recent past is to let the reader know the approximate year in which the action is taking place without giving the impression of scene-setting. A mediocre novelist will cram the early dialogue with clunky references to Ted Heath’s chances at the next election or the
Reading this novel I couldn’t help but think of the opening lines of Miroslav Holub’s poem, ‘A Boy’s Head’ — ‘In it there is a space ship/ and a project/ for doing away with piano lessons.’ Not that Robbie Coyle, the hero of Crumey’s novel and the son of a socialist/communist father growing up in
This intriguing novella tells the story of a drop of oil from its earlier form as the heart of a prehistoric horse to its combustion in the engine of a Ford, where it intersects with the lives of two humans. On one of these, ‘the soot particles of the ex-heart of the horse’ operate as
In this book John K. Cooley, who has spent a lifetime writing about international intrigue, investigates the subject of forgery. More specifically, he looks at the way people have tried to use forgery as a way of waging war or seizing power. It seems like a terribly dry subject at first — lots of stuff
As I intend to dispute the entire thesis on which this little book rests, I should say at the outset that it is one of the best short contributions to an important argument I have ever read. Cleanly and crisply written, entertaining and clear, and packed with factual ammunition, Counterknowledge makes the ideal companion for
Sam Leith reviews Toby Faber’s history of Fabergé eggs What a great idea for a book, this is — and how well-executed. Toby Faber has produced, at just the length to suit it, a hugely enjoyable and informative account of the making and afterlife of the best-known examples of the jeweller’s art. Here is a series
Early on the morning of 21 September 1809 two ministers of the crown in the Duke of Portland’s cabinet met to fight a duel on Putney Heath: they were George Canning the Foreign Secretary and Lord Castlereagh who was what we would now call Minister of War. Castlereagh the challenger was a crack shot; Canning
Norman Mailer spent his life hunting for a subject big enough to suit or satisfy his titanic ego. The post- humous On God suggests he finally hit the spot. The Almighty is made to come across as an embattled novelist — as a version of Norman Mailer himself in fact — ‘a mighty source of
‘You can tell a river-lover. They cannot help but pause on a bridge to investigate what lies beneath.’ It is hard to imagine anyone not doing that, but our author is a generous soul and wishes to include us all in his passion. I wanted to celebrate the ways in which rivers stirred spirits and
Why do we write? Dr Johnson had no doubts, or pretended to have none: ‘no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money’. This is manifestly false, unless you make writing for some other reason one of your definitions of the word ‘blockhead’. In any case it’s not true of Johnson himself. Despite the
In one of his more endearing flights of fancy, Eddie Izzard once speculated on what the Greeks did with themselves in the Wooden Horse while waiting for nightfall in Troy. It was clearly something that Homer had never got round to thinking through properly, but for Izzard, once a chap has got into his breastplate,
It is difficult enough to evaluate the evidence that the British government is supposed to have received before its decision to engage in the Iraq war: imagine, therefore, the enhanced problem in determining the evidence for the Resurrection of Christ — 2,000 years after the event. There are also 2,000 years of accumulated attempts. Now
It is a pleasure to encounter a new writer, particularly if that writer is modest, competent, and above all unheralded. Frances Itani is Canadian and recognisably from the same background as Alice Munro, although lacking Munro’s wistfulness and emotional delicacy. She is unknown in this country, although the author of a previous novel. On the
Hard to define Lewis Hyde. Antiquarian, classicist, story-teller, mythographer, connoisseur, philologist, teacher and scholar, he is as multifarious as the trickster archetype which forms the subject of his new book. In Greece trickster appears as Hermes, and Hyde begins with the Homeric Hymn written around 420 BC which deals with Hermes’s birth and career. Zeus
Alberto Manguel, the dust jacket informs us, is an ‘anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor’ who was born in Argentina, moved to Canada in the 1980s and now lives partly in France. A generous gloss on this would be to say that he is an intrepid crosser of boundaries, someone whose identity is too open-ended
In 1958, Daphne du Maurier published a collection of short stories, The Breaking Point. Justine Picardie’s novel Daphne begins the year of the stories’ composition, 1957. Du Maurier, then Britain’s best-selling novelist, struggles with her own breaking point. Newly acquainted with the infidelity of her husband, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, known as Tommy, she