Biography

I approached the late David Nokes’s scholarly book with some trepidation, having heard that it had been criticised for its apparent dismissal of James Boswell. I approached the late David Nokes’s scholarly book with some trepidation, having heard that it had been criticised for its apparent dismissal of James Boswell. As I had gained all my previous knowledge of the great Sam from Boswell’s magnificent biography I did not expect to enjoy this new exploration. But I did, very much indeed. Nowhere does he accuse Boswell of falsely creating the character of Johnson; indeed he acknowledges that he portrayed an irritable but very human subject. Nokes’s book, densely academic, provides

A postal strike would have been a disaster for Van Gogh. Letters were his lifeline and consolation. Not only did he receive through the mail his regular allowance from his brother Theo but, in letter after letter in return, he poured out his thoughts and feelings, recorded his work in progress and conveyed his impressions of books, people and places. In his often solitary existence, he was an avid recipient and kept in touch with a variety of correspondents, especially when he was in the South of France during the last two years of his life. The glory must be shared, however, with Theo, in that he kept Vincent’s letters,

In what was intended as the opening line of a 1951 catalogue essay to an exhibition by the painter Leonor Fini, Jean Cocteau wrote: ‘There is always, at the margin of work by men, that luminous and capricious shadow of work by women.’ Not surprisingly, Fini excised it. In what was intended as the opening line of a 1951 catalogue essay to an exhibition by the painter Leonor Fini, Jean Cocteau wrote: ‘There is always, at the margin of work by men, that luminous and capricious shadow of work by women.’ Not surprisingly, Fini excised it. But it was an attitude that would plague her, and other female artists in

Most of us are brought up not badly, but wrongly. Trained to the tenets of Mrs DoAsYou-WouldBeDoneBy, we are easily trampled underfoot by students of the Master DoItMyWay-OrBeDoneOver school. Consider the career of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery as an example of the second method of upbringing. Mercilessly whipped and humiliated as a child, he grew up self-obsessed, wilful, arrogant, and it would seem without any redeeming personal qualities. Yet it was largely Monty’s egotistic drive that made him the most effective British general of the second world war, while more sympathetic commanders like Wavell and Alexander were relegated to the sidelines. High among the surprises of this delightful memoir of

‘Why are you laughing?’ they demanded again and again, as Cheever tittered at some grindingly miserable memory from his youth, or some cruelty he’d inflicted on his children. What his keepers were pathologising was the writer’s genius to see the hilarious in the chaotic, the respectable, the insulting and the desperate. Cheever was, above all, extremely funny, and he has been served now by a marvellous biography which, through it all, manages to keep its sense of humour. Blake Bailey’s Life is alarming, truthful, scabrous, but above all absurdly funny. You feel Cheever wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. The medical professionals had never heard of Cheever — ‘he

It might seem odd that Eric Ives, the acclaimed biographer of Anne Boleyn, should turn his attention to another executed Tudor queen, Lady Jane Grey. As he points out, in the past six years alone, seven biographical studies of Lady Jane have appeared, and while this could be said to demonstrate the perennial fascination exerted by Jane’s short life and grim fate, the question inevitably arises as to whether even a scholar of Ives’s standing will be able to add much to what has been written. Yet it soon emerges that Ives is not primarily concerned with Lady Jane’s personal tragedy. Instead he focusses on the events that led to

Time was, back in the Renaissance, when barely a book would be published which did not feature some lavish hero-worship of Cicero. Machiavelli, Erasmus, Thomas More: they all regularly name-checked ‘Tully’. The same could hardly be said of authors today. Even those who do deign to mention Rome’s greatest orator have rarely tended to feel much admiration for him. Typical was Kingsley Amis. In Take a Girl Like You, the raffish schoolteacher, Patrick Standish, finds himself drilling his pupils in the Phillipics, the speeches which Cicero, with immense courage, delivered against Mark Antony, at the eventual cost of his life. To Standish, however, they convey, not the heroism of an

In 1837 The Quarterly Review’s anonymous critic — actually, one Abraham Hayward — turned his attention to Charles Dickens, then in the first flaring of his popularity as the author of Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. In 1837 The Quarterly Review’s anonymous critic — actually, one Abraham Hayward — turned his attention to Charles Dickens, then in the first flaring of his popularity as the author of Sketches by Boz, The Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist. ‘It requires no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate,’ wrote Hayward. ‘He has risen like a rocket, and he will come down like the stick.’ A bit mean, but

The audiotape of Alan Clark’s Diaries — barely mentioned in this rather Dr Watsonish, sensible shoe of a biography — is well worth hearing. The audiotape of Alan Clark’s Diaries — barely mentioned in this rather Dr Watsonish, sensible shoe of a biography — is well worth hearing. Alan Clark narrates them himself, in a wonderfully high camp, pantomime manner, reminiscent of Kenneth Williams reading the Just William stories.  It’s a rib-tickling comic turn, and adds a new dimension to the original book, an additional mirror reflecting on the first mirror at a jaunty angle. Clark’s semi-parodic tone acts as a sort of wry critique on the diaries, which are

Kenneth MacMillan was once described as ‘the Francis Bacon of ballet’ — not an analogy that gets one very far, but there’s something in it. Kenneth MacMillan was once described as ‘the Francis Bacon of ballet’ — not an analogy that gets one very far, but there’s something in it. His obsession with victims, outsiders and extreme psychological states reflects the panic in his own tortured and alienated psyche. His choreography contains a lot of silent screaming: it brutalises the human body as much as it beautifies it. Sex in his work is presented as a violent compulsion — often a rape — rather than an ecstatic release or an

At the end of his thorough and considered life of William Golding, John Carey remarks that ‘nowadays mention of Lord of the Flies sparks recognition in a way that Golding’s own name does not, or so my admittedly limited market research has indicated.’ Can this really be true? Has Golding’s immense reputation diminished, in the 16 years since his death, to the authorship of that first novel? Carey refers elsewhere to a book signing in Oxford in 1984. In the wake of the Nobel Prize and the celebrated Booker of 1980, when Golding was thought to have won over Anthony Burgess’s magnificent Earthly Powers with Rites of Passage, the queue

In the last couple of decades or so, a plenitude of biographers have provided us with studies of 20th-century literary celebrities, from Thomas Hardy and George Bernard Shaw to Evelyn Waugh and T. S. Eliot. Roland Chambers now treats the life and works of Arthur Ransome, a lesser mortal than these grandees. Ransome was born in 1884, the son of a professor at what would become Leeds University. Chambers gives a clear account of Ransome’s driving ambition to be a writer. After leaving Rugby he took a job as an office boy in a publishing house at eight shillings a week. Within a few years he had become a figure