It’s difficult not to warm to Mad Tracey from Margate (‘I like Tracey … I landed on my feet with that name’), the inventor of the Rothko Comfort Blanket for Private Views, however reluctant one may be to have one’s nose rubbed in other people’s bodily fluids and spiritual excretions. She famously staggered out of
At the end of his excellent introduction to Auschwitz Report, Robert Gordon invokes W.G. Sebald’s argument in his last book, On the Natural History of Destruction: compared to ‘natural histories’, e.g. contemporary medical reports such as this one, more literary texts ‘[know] nothing’. W.G. Sebald was one of the greatest thinker-writers of the 20th century,
Claire Tomalin is an accomplished biographer. While she recognises Hardy’s genius, this book is not an essay in literary criticism. With great skill and sensitivity she uses his poetry, novels and his extensive correspondence to illuminate the life of a man for whom she writes ‘the wounds inflicted by life never quite healed’. He never
Having It So Good follows hard on the heels of Dominic Sandbrook’s Never Had It So Good, which appeared last year. Both are doorstoppers — over 600 pages long — and the reader groans as he picks them up. Soon, no doubt, literary editors will be asking reviewers to weigh books rather than write about
The Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh had quite a send-off. As per the plans he drew up himself before his death, the memorial party organised by the Friends of Theo was adorned with a rock band, comedians, miniskirted cigarette girls, and female guests in twin-sets and pearls — something Van Gogh had found an erotic
I have never met George Monbiot, and I know nothing personally about him to his discredit. I have no reason to think that he is other than polite to shopkeepers, considerate to other road-users, fond of animals, a staunch friend, a sound family man, a respectful and affectionate son. I can only judge the keeper
The most affecting moment in Gordon Burn’s new book is only marginally connected to its subjects. Borrowed from Jackie Milburn’s autobiography Golden Goals, it takes in a long-ago Christmas morning when the future England centre-forward woke in the small hours to discover a new pair of football boots — the first ever allowed him —
Susanna Clarke taps enchantingly into a vein of folkloric gold. She presents our world as existing in tandem with ‘Faerie’, but without butterfly-winged Victoriana. Instead she creates a sense of danger, as if the Faeries in question are the displaced gods of Robert Graves’ The White Goddess, still retaining elements of frightful power over mankind.
That beautiful, untamed brunette (or was she a woman in Zee & Co.?) was once more fervid than Elizabeth Taylor in party mood. Edna O’Brien at the age of 73, however, is a circumspect Titian, with a porcelain complexion and minimal maquillage. The rebellious country girl, who ran away from a village in County Clare,
In the great prize-giving of history, there are only two truly ‘bad’ kings of England: King John and James II. Or three if you count Ethelred the Unready. There is more argument about the ‘good’ ones, but King John’s brother Richard ranks high in most people’s pantheon, right up there with King Arthur and Queen
Shakespeare aside, there isn’t a dramatist whose work has proved more protean than Wagner’s. Patrick Carnegy explores the astonishing variety of interpretation it has provoked, in a book that has been long meditated as well as meticulously researched. It isn’t comprehensive —Wolfgang Wagner, Rennert, Wernicke and Lehnhoff are only a few of the significant directors
This is an even better book than the author’s erudite, dense and sprawling triumph of last year, Earthly Powers. With Sacred Causes, we are now in the present day, near enough — and that terrible, human, susceptibility to secular or religious ideologies possessed of unbending certitude, which in a way is Burleigh’s theme, should tweak
Adam Sisman begins his story of one of the most famous friendships in literary history with the vivid account of a young man who, having already walked 40 miles, takes a short-cut across a Dorset cornfield, running to greet two people working in their garden. The young man is Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the friends
This anthology is a sheer delight, full of good things. It gets off to a splendid start. On its dust- cover is a picture of a dog with a light bulb in its stomach; underneath is a gem from Groucho Marx: ‘Outside a dog a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s
This is the sketchy diary of a 60-year-old woman with an amusing, runaway pen, written over 19 months. She is scatty, impulsive, open-minded and living cheerfully in Shepherd’s Bush, which never ceases to intrigue her (‘Today I saw a man standing on his head in the middle of the pavement’). Wide-eyed and aware of men,
Norman Davies is always at his best challenging received ideas and inherited perceptions, and the areas covered by these essays provide him with rich hunting-grounds for both. The title is misleading in that he ranges around Australia, California and Siberia, not to mention the Middle East, as well as Europe, and takes swipes at prejudices
A Time Before Genesis (1986) by Les Dawson The rare book shown above (try getting hold of a copy) is Les Dawson’s only serious work of fiction. It provides a disturbing insight into the mind of the late comedian. Its thesis is that the earth has, for millennia, been controlled by alien forces who have
Richard Dawkins is an evangelical. The cover of this book, with its red explosion and large writing, reminds one of those popular volumes by Protestant pastors which purport to prove that JESUS IS ALIVE. Dawkins has all the fervour and anger of such persons, and their well-meaning puzzlement that so many cannot see what to
Medley of horses by the motorwayuntethered; the field surplus to transportor agriculture. At this speed the horses looklike Travellers’ horses beside a leftover woodwhere smoke rising sketches a caravan.As we flash by our road draws its own wake,a joyful anarchy of second growth — beechy and larchy shoots, scrub, militant bindweedwhose canker lilies, malign and
The idea is to set the mind adriftAnd sleep comes. Mozart, exquisitely dressed,Walks carefully to work between soft pilesOf fresh horse-dung. Nice work. Why was my gift Hidden behind the tree? I cried for miles.No one could find it. Find the tiger’s face.It’s in the tree: i.e. the strangest place. But gifts were presents then.