The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The author of this book and I both visited the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank as schoolboys. The author of this book and I both visited the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank as schoolboys. He was 13, I was 11. We were both old enough to remember the war.
Cables from Kabul is Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’s valedictory account of his years as ambassador to Kabul (2007-9) and as this country’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (2009-10). Cables from Kabul is Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles’s valedictory account of his years as ambassador to Kabul (2007-9) and as this country’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan
Very useful in modern conversation, Oscar Wilde. Not for the quotable quips — everyone knows those already. His real value comes when you’re trying to guess someone’s sexuality. ‘He can’t be gay,’ someone will say of whoever is under the microscope, ‘he’s married with two kids.’ You hit them with the reply: ‘So was Oscar
An ex-farmer whose brother has died fighting in Iraq is the man at the centre of Graham Swift’s new book, a state-of-the-nation novel on a small canvas. An ex-farmer whose brother has died fighting in Iraq is the man at the centre of Graham Swift’s new book, a state-of-the-nation novel on a small canvas. Jack
The square jaw and steely gaze are deceptive. In reality, next to a prima donna on the slide, no one is more vain and temperamental than a general on the climb. So much at least is clear from Peter Caddick-Adams’s intriguing study of generals Bernard Montgomery and Erwin Rommel. Each was assiduous in the celebrity
Clarke Hayes has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the magazine. Here it is for readers of this blog: I am in love with Jackson Brodie. Does this mean that, in a literary homoerotic twist, I am actually in love with Kate Atkinson, his creator? I think it must. Sometimes I think
Tim Parks keeps digging, interestingly and valuably, on the idea that writing in other languages is becoming tilted towards ease of translation into English. John Self considers the charms and shortcomings of Ali Smith. I have missed not only Bloomsday but also Harriet Beecher Stowe day. In Osaka, there is a house made out of
It’s Bloomsday. If Joyce is your bag, then here is a link to the Bloomsday page on the official James Joyce website. Joyce is an acquired taste and can be bitter when you’ve got it. Ulysees is too great a slog to contemplate for some. But an old drunk in Soho once told me that
Close the nominations. Unless someone publishes proof of Shergar pulling a plough in the Yemen, it must be a good bet for William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2011. Twirlymen is the absorbing maiden work by Amol Rajan, a journalist at the Independent. His aim is to celebrate spin bowling’s impressive survival in the
As Dr Johnson famously observed, ‘No man but a blockhead wrote, except for money.’ But even the wisest don’t write for all that much these days. The prevailing view is that the market for serious non-fiction is wilting. Therefore the publicity of prizes counts for double. Yesterday, the shortlist for the BBC’S Samuel Johnson Prize
Michael Powell, of Powell and Pressburger fame, replies to a script, titled ‘Wiseguys’, sent by Martin Scorcese for the master’s prognosis. The screenplay had been based on Nicholas Pileggi’s book Wiseguy (1986). ‘Wiseguys’, of course, became Goodfellas. Hat-tip: Letters of Note.
‘Hollywood was different back then.’ For a start, the Awards ceremonies of the ‘60’s weren’t dominated by ‘very small young men who had just been in a vampire film’. Soirees brimmed with the gravitas of Beverley Hills’ most statuesque, those around whom a youthful Michael Caine gawped and assimilated anecdotes until, all of a sudden,
1.) Clive James has returned to TV criticism. He was poached out of retirement by the Telegraph who proudly billed their latest catch as the ‘world’s greatest TV critic’. It sees him resume where his groundbreaking Observer column, written between 1972-82, left off. Widely cited as turning TV criticism into serious art, James collected his
The literary world is paying homage to Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96. Here is an excerpt from the Times’ obituary (£). ‘The curtailment of his formal education was compensated by his intellectual curiosity and by the civilising influence of his mother who introduced him to the pleasures of art and literature. His
One of the most irritating things about the launch of a Jeffrey Archer book is the high pitched whine of indignation and scorn from that small, bitchy and endangered species, the literary community. Well, after God knows how many years and the sale of 350 million books, they have been remarkably reserved about his latest,
It is 1979. You are a 15-year-old boy starring in a hit US television show. You’ve seen the crowds of screaming girls outside the gates as you arrive for work, and are therefore very excited to have received your first fan letter. You open it eagerly and begin to read: ‘Dear Mr Rob Lowe, You
If you thought that bust of Lenin you had on your desk as a teenager was the ultimate in radical chic, think on. Infatuated with the French Revolution, Lord Stanhope proclaimed his solidarity at a banquet at White’s Club. Announcing that he was thenceforth to be known as Citizen Stanhope, he ordered the coronets to
Two centuries ago, Edmund Burke famously mocked the intellectuals of revolutionary France for trying to devise a perfectly rational constitution for their country. The Abbé Sieyès, he wrote, had whole nests of pigeon-holes full of constitutions, ready made, ticketed, sorted and numbered, suited to every season and every fancy . . . so that no
Prince Philip’s childhood was such that he had every right to be emotionally repressed and psychologically disturbed. Prince Philip’s childhood was such that he had every right to be emotionally repressed and psychologically disturbed. Born sixth in line to the Greek throne, at the age of 18 months he was hounded from what, in name
Some of the best writing about sport in recent years has been done by journalists who tend their soil, so to speak, in another parish. Peter Oborne’s biography of the Cape Town-born England cricketer Basil D’Oliveira was a deserved prize-winner, and another political scribe, Leo McKinstry, has done justice to Geoffrey Boycott, the Charlton brothers
Christopher Howse describes Spain as ‘the strangest place with which Westerners can easily identify’. Christopher Howse describes Spain as ‘the strangest place with which Westerners can easily identify’. He has certainly written one of the strangest books on the country in recent years. His approach is gloriously and provocatively unfashionable. Whereas other authors on Spain
In the patriotic mythology of British arms 1759 may be the one true annus mirabilis, the ‘year of victories’, the year of Minden, Quebec and Quiberon Bay, but has there ever been a year comparable to 1918? In that year 20,000 British soldiers surrendered on a single day, 31 March, and yet within six months
Mark Mason has written the Bookend column in the latest issue of The Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog. It is 1979. You are a 15-year-old boy starring in a hit US television show. You’ve seen the crowds of screaming girls outside the gates as you arrive for work, and are therefore
An exciting new bookshop that shut down after three weeks (on purpose). A young man who helped a branch of the previous bookshop go out of business. The logical (but not necessarily pleasant) conclusion of the “Jane Austen remix” trend. A short history of the heavy-metal umlaut. Imaginary movie posters for David Foster Wallace fans.
The hardback edition of D.R. Thorpe’s Supermac is 626 pages in length (not including endnotes and index), 24cm x 16cm x 6cm in girth, and weighs in at more than one kilogram – on first appearances, not a book for a beach holiday. Or so I thought, because despite the corporeal hardships of reading this
Congratulations to Téa Obreht, whose novel The Tiger’s Wife won the Orange Prize for Fiction last night. At 25, she is the youngest ever winner. Chairman of the judges Bettany Hughes said: “The Tiger’s Wife is an exceptional book and Téa Obreht is a truly exciting new talent. Obreht’s powers of observation and her understanding
The Hay Festival has ended, but so much of this enormous festival went largely unreported. Here’s the final dispatch from George Binning: Richard E Grant’s conversation with Peter Godwin about Mugabe’s regime and Godwin’s latest book, The Fear, gave us a nuanced insight into African politics that could not have been written by the Western
‘They dined on mince and slices of quince, which they ate with a runcible spoon‘ The Owl and the Pussycat, Edward Lear, 1871 To hazard a guess at the exact nature of a runcible spoon, you’d have to consult Edward Lear’s 1849 illustration of the Dolomphious duck (pictured) on the point of devouring its
The Hay Festival has ended, but reports from this enormous festival do not. Here’s another dispatch from George Binning: In 1977, having started a craze for second hand book shops and festivals in Hay on Wye, Richard Booth crowned himself King of Hay. He also appointed a chamber of hereditary peers in 2000 (a nice