Culture

In 1990 Mary Robinson became Ireland’s first female president. As a progressive liberal, Robinson seemed a very unlikely candidate for the job, in what was then, a deeply conservative country.  Throughout the 70s and 80s, she worked as a human rights lawyer, as well as a Senator, arguing a number of landmark cases that challenged various clauses in the Irish constitution that failed to protect minorities. Robinson fought on behalf of women, who were effectively treated as second-class citizens, homosexuals, who were criminalized for their sexual orientation, and she also campaigned to change the law on the sale of contraceptives, which were illegal in Ireland, without prescription, until 1985. When she became President, Robinson was determined to reinvigorate the role.

Funny the ways you can learn about a book. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones alerted me to one recently, 43 years after his death. I was at Somerset House for the exhibition of photos marking the band’s half-century, and one shot saw them leaving Heathrow Airport in 1966, bound for America. Brian, in a blazer whose stripes were quite shockingly vibrant (ten years later it would have felt perfectly at home on Ronnie Barker as he read the news), was carrying a book. A small, slim volume, its title was hidden away in a tiny font, but the photo had been blown up so large you could just make out that title: The Good Loo Guide.

If you have five minutes to spare this evening, read Teju Cole's account of meeting V.S. Naipaul. Writing from the covetable position of a column in the hallowed New Yorker, Cole is man enough to admit feeling awkward when he meets Naipaul, and, worse still, when he is addressed by him as an equal. It’s a winning approach, candid rather than lovey, and both men emerge well from it. Cole’s portrait of Naipaul is intriguing. Cole is not an unthinking admirer: he acknowledges that Naipaul has been ‘so fond of the word “nigger,” so aggressive in his lack of sympathy towards Africa, so brutal in his treatment of women.’ He appears to be honest, touchingly so.

‘How the War Began’ by Thomas Jordan, 1663. 'I'll tell you how the war began: The holy ones assembled (For so they called their party then Whose consciences so trembled). They pulled the bishops from their seats, And set up every widgeon; The Scotch were sent for to do feats With oat-cakes and religion. They plucked communion-tables down, And broke our painted glasses; They threw our altars to the ground, And tumbled down the crosses; They set up Cromwell and his heir, The Lord and Lady Claypole; Because they hated Common Prayer, The organ and the maypole.' Three-hundred and fifty years ago, in September 1662, congregations in churches all over England were getting used to hearing services from the new Book of Common Prayer.

Winning the Booker can do strange things. For one, critics tend to become noticeably shyer around authors with some bling in their trophy cabinets, hyperbole blunting their edge. But if ever there was a writer primed to dismantle automatic appreciation it is Howard Jacobson. Zoo Time, his first novel since The Finkler Question won the 2010 Booker Prize, does everything short of physically assaulting the reader to excuse itself from being a bland follow up. In fact, its very obnoxiousness is both its weakness and its strength. I must confess to both liking and loathing it, pushed between extremes depending on the subject matter.