Culture

Most of the time life is messy. But sometimes — just occasionally — it all comes together. I’d been reading Howards End. One of the classics I’d never got round to. Hadn’t even seen the film starring Emma Thompson, on account of it being a film starring Emma Thompson. By two-thirds of the way through I was still undecided; novels from over a century ago can be hard work, largely because of the wordiness. (Many of Dickens’s champions admitted that in the recent Charles-fest.) You know there must be something there — books don’t become classics for nothing — but it can take a bit, often a big bit, of finding. Fiction led by its characters rather than its plot often has this problem.

Marina Lewycka has broken her busy reading schedule to answer this week’s Shelf Life questions. She admits to a fascination with Biggles and Paddington Bear. Her latest book, Various Pets Alive and Dead, is published by Penguin. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Old Filth by Jane Gardam (almost finished — would have if wasn’t writing this), Together by Richard Sennett, Mo Said She Was Quirky by James Kelman.   2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Biggles was my beloved under-the-covers companion.   3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one? I sobbed so much reading War and Peace that I could hardly see the pages.

Acclaimed author Evgeny Morozov is in London promoting the new edition of his book, The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World. It argues that internet freedom is an illusion and that everyone’s freedom is at stake. It is timely, then, that his trip has coincided with the web surveillance row that has been shaking the coalition. Morozov met with the Spectator this afternoon, and this is what he said about ‘email snooping’:  DB: With email snooping, I’d assumed that the security services did that already? EM: They do it already, but they do it retroactively.

I haven't been much drawn to erotica or political allegory, but Chen Xiwo's I Love my Mum changed that. Relaxed, in an open necked shirt and jeans, at a recent English PEN event in Bloomsbury, Xiwo looked the antithesis of a persecuted writer. He appeared with a range of other speakers, from exiled writers to documentary filmmakers, to discuss contemporary literature in China. Many writers at the event are trying to provoke, trying to inspire change. Xiwo, for instance, penned a novel gilded in matricide and incest to comment on the Chinese state, aptly titled, I Love my Mum. It was banned in 2007; the reason why was ‘classified information.

In his new book, Wired for Culture, Mark Pagel — a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Reading — argues that social structures and culture are vital components in human evolution. Human beings are altruistic, helpful, and cooperative in ways that other mammals are not. Pagel says our facility for culture is the key to our success as a species. Without a propensity for culture, the traits that make us stand above other mammals — in Darwinian terms — such as: consciousness, language and intelligence, would not exist. He spoke to The Spectator about the idea of “the self” as an illusion, how most human behaviour is a form of copying, and why religions have been beneficial to humanity.

There are now thought to be about six million people interested in having an allotment, with waiting lists as long as 40 years in one London borough.  There have also been huge numbers of words written trying to explain their revival.   Perhaps the real question is why they ever went away, given the success of the Dig for Victory campaign in the Second World War, one of the most successful attempts to galvanise the public into action.    There were 1.4m allotments by 1943, by which time over a million tons of vegetables a year were being grown in gardens, parks and waste land.  There were radio programmes (3.5 million people tuned into C. H. Middleton’s gardening slots), even Dig for Victory anthems.

Perhaps one of the best things to come out of Birmingham, Mike Skinner, mastermind behind The Streets, lets us know what he's reading in this week's Shelf Life. He reveals an interest in 20th Century history, what he once managed to get 10,000 people to do and a fondness for Philip Marlowe's bon mots. His memoirs The Story of the Streets are out now. He tweets @skinnermike.  1) What are you reading at the moment?  All Hell Let Loose by Max Hastings and The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. Both in their different ways incredibly well researched. 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers?  I didn't read really. Actually I did read a lot of magazines but books didn't work for my attention span when I was young. Though I used to write a lot.