Culture

The second part of our critical roundup of the ten most-talked-about literary biographies. Read part 1 here. Georgette Heyer: Biography of a Bestseller by Jennifer Kloester This admirable attempt to resurrect the queen of regency romance doesn’t really meet its objective. When publishers are looking for quotes for the paperback, Daisy Goodwin’s ‘solid and well-researched’ (Sunday Times) will probably have to do. Rachel Cooke’s Observer review was the most damning: ‘What, I wonder, is the point of this book? Who is it for?

You can always find a thief in financial markets. That is where the money is. Most frauds are quite dull affairs, and some are never uncovered. A few, however, are spectacular. The scale of loss, or the glamour of the perpetrator, or the failure of the ‘system’ to spot and prevent the crookery, may contribute to make a good story. One case, almost within living memory, which has all of these elements, was that of Gerard Lee Bevan. He was born in 1869 into a highly respected City banking family. The Bevans were among the founders of Barclays and continued to be involved in the management of the bank until recently. However, Gerard Bevan did not make the grade for the bank.

Is the world in need of a yet another Sherlock Holmes story? Well, with the successful publication of Anthony Horowitz’s The House of Silk it seems it is. Riding on the crest of the wave created by BBC’s ingenious series Sherlock, which brings the brilliant detective into the 21st century, and the Robert Downey Jnr blockbuster movies, which portray Holmes as a scruffy Victorian bruiser, Horowitz’s novel, authorised by the Conan Doyle estate no less, attempts to give us an authentic Sherlockian adventure. Of course, creating copycat Holmes tales is nothing new. There have been literally hundreds of them over the years.

It took ten attempts, nine rejections, one brave publisher, but ultimately only a handful of revisions before the late Sir William Golding finally saw his debut novel, Lord of the Flies, in print in 1954. To mark the centenary of Golding’s birth the Bodleian Library in Oxford recently unveiled the original manuscript. The book’s text, instantly familiar, is displayed alongside a collection of Golding’s other, less celebrated books, highlighting the true paradox of his literary career.   While there’s no shame in growing fat off the royalties of a single masterpiece, one of the many things John Carey’s magnificent biography of William Golding made clear is that he never wanted to be a one-hit wonder.

Charles Moore's column in tomorrow's issue of the magazine contains a wickedly funny literary item. Here it is, a day early, for readers of this blog: The Duchess of Cornwall also strikes a blow for cultural subversion this month. For Give A Book, the excellent charity set up in memory of the playwright Simon Gray, she has chosen the pre-war children’s classic Moorland Mousie by ‘Golden Gorse’, about a wild Exmoor pony. The tale is told in Mousie’s voice. The Duchess says the book ‘brings back happy memories of the many hours that my sister and I spent galloping over the moors with Moorland Mousie and his friends’. Thanks to her patronage, WHSmith will be stocking the book from next month.

Wordy things have had a renaissance of late. Stephen Fry’s superb five-part BBC series, Fry’s Planet Word, aired recently; David Crystal has just produced a handsome new volume, The Story of English in 100 Words; and now Mark Forsyth, of Inky Fool blog fame, offers up the charmingly titled The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language.   As such a quirky handle suggests, the book is a collection of verbal curiosities. Forsyth investigates what he calls the “glorious insanities of the English language” by exploring the etymological roots of words. The results are fascinating.

The English have never been ones for lounging around in black polo necks, chain-smoking and discussing the Marxist implications of a full stop. Intellectualism is a habit we leave to others. Compared to friends across the Atlantic or over the Channel, the rare beast we call the English literary intellectual has been starved. Until recently, their means of sustenance has been limited to a few publications. The London Review of Books is an oasis in the intellectual desert of the British Isles, even the cakes in the café are “independent-market, surprising and energetic”. Recent issues included a spat between Establishment figures Pankaj Mishra and Niall Ferguson and a poem by the late WG Sebald.