Culture

Shakespeare and Milton: unsurpassable in the English canon. Milton’s mature poetry stands for perfection, Shakespeare’s for a wholeness of vision verging on the truly religious. Their examples cannot be rivalled, only followed. Dickens chose to follow Shakespeare. And now D. J. Taylor trails Dickens. Derby Day is a story about—wait for it—the Derby. A spectacular race-horse by the name of Tiberius has fallen into the hands of Mr Davenant who lives quietly in Lincolnshire. Soon he is not living quite so quietly. A brash young man from London begins to take a professional interest in Mr Davenant’s debts – and an even keener interest in his horse.

Mark Mason has written the Bookends column in this week's issue of the magazine. Here it is for readers of this blog: One day in the late 17th century, goes the legend, a French monk named Pierre called out to his colleagues: ‘Brothers, I am drinking stars!’ The French for ‘monk’ is Dom. Pierre’s surname was Perignon. He had invented champagne, and the world had changed forever. Which explains the appear-ance, over 300 years later, of Champagne: A Global History by Becky Sue Epstein. The Perignon tale is in there, along with many more lively and engaging stories from the history of sparkling wine (which, Epstein assures us, goes back much further than those three short centuries).

As literary fly-on-the-wall moments go, it would be hard to beat. John Banville – the most austerely mannered stylist in the language, the archbishop of literary fiction – hands his publisher the typescript of his latest. Then he springs the surprise: by the way, it’s a crime novel. Plot, character, the lot. One would forgive the publishing exec for falling horizontal from the shock.   The only possible hint of such an inclination had been with Banville’s 1989 novel, The Book of Evidence. And it’s a faint one at that. Narrated by a murderer from his cell, the book is more Proust than Poirot with its prissily exact narrator and leisurely investigation of motive (or the lack of it). No surprise there.

Benjamin Black – aka John Banville – is back for another round of detective fun with A Death in Summer. Does the crossover magic work for a fifth outing?   In the Guardian, Mark Lawson admires the way Black’s hero, Quirke, alludes to heroes of the detective genre: "He is known only by his surname (Dexter’s Morse), is an alcoholic chainsmoker (Rankin’s Rebus), loves poetry (P.D. James’s Dalgleish), has a difficult relationship with a daughter (Mankell’s Wallander) and has difficulty in sustaining relationships (everyone’s everyone)." What such allusion amounts to, Lawson claims, is ‘a respect for the form in which he has chosen to work.

The President of the Liberal Democrats, Tim Farron MP, has spent the last few weeks pre-empting Sir John Vickers’ report on banking reform. Tough legislation to split up the banks must now be passed “before the next election”, he insists: it is “right for the country”, and “must happen as soon as possible”. Reading Masters of Nothing - the new book from Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi on the banking crisis - the ex-NUS officer may have found some unlikely allies in the new crop of Conservative MPs. Although there is still a debate about the timing of reform, Masters of Nothing is an authoritative and scathing critique of financial services, and its conclusions are broadly similar to those of Mr Farron. The City is failing, it argues.

I'm sure Karl Rove is, on this at least, correct: Rick Perry's book will cause him problems for as long as he remains in the race for the Republican nomination. To put it gently, few Americans believe that Social Security and many other federal programmes are unconstitutional; even fewer are likely to vote for a candidate who was on record, as recently as last year, suspecting that they might be and that these matters were properly the purview of the 50 states, not Washington. So it will be interesting to see how, if at all, Perry is attacked in tonight's debate*. There is no shortage of large-bore ammunition. Against that, a book titled Fed Up! pretty accurately captures the mood in the United States even if disgruntled voters might differ from Perry on any number of specific issues.