Culture

I don't arrive at my camp site until 11pm, partly as a result of my own sense of comic timing, partly the result of a long lunch with Dear Mary and chums. Good fortune would have it that Spectator HQ has been pitched next to Radio Cymru's weather reader, who tells us in the morning that it will be fine today and even hotter tomorrow. So far so good. First on my extensive program of literary delights comes Simon Garfield, talking about his wildly entertaining book Just my Type. The lecture proved so popular it was bumped up two spots to the much larger Oxfam stage.

It is 82 years since the publication of William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. It was an unlikely commercial success.   After James Joyce’s Ulysses, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury might be the most famous unread novel in English. American schoolchildren are forced to plough through it (on the assumption that the Great American Novel must be hiding somewhere). But nine times out of ten, when you see a paperback copy on someone’s bookshelf, the spine is beautifully un-creased.   This doesn’t surprise me. If you or I told a publisher that we’d written a modernist novel about nothing happening over an Easter weekend, of which the first half was told in the disjointed ramblings of an idiot...

James Bond is the great chameleon. From the velvety burr of Connery through to the tango tan of Moore and the aluminium pecs of Craig. And then, of course, there is the Bond of the books. Between covers (of the literary sort, at least), Bond transforms again: refrigerated in the black-and-white of print, he becomes clinical and orderly, disdaining the stagey theatrics of modern day spycraft. It is to this Bond that Jeffery Deaver returns in the latest addition to the 007 canon, Carte Blanche. Indeed, Deaver himself is given carte blanche. Rather than merely update Bond, as did Sebastian Faulks in his 2008 effort Devil May Care, Deaver recasts him completely.

Mark Mason has written the Bookend column in this week's issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog. In the summer of 2003, in a bar in Malta, George Best was approached by a man holding a paper napkin and a pen. ‘It’s been my childhood dream,’ said the man, ‘to have George Best ask me for my autograph.’ Best obliged. As so often, his fame was so great that it turned normality upside down. The star’s own phrase was that fame ‘turns the dial up’.

It was a strange scene. An audience of whiskery Classics enthusiasts listening to a lecture about the influence of Homer and Virgil on Bob Dylan, which is considerable – Sir Christopher Ricks has written a 500 page book on the subject. At the end of the lecture, this delightful and odd society moved to invite Dylan to its ranks, so impressed was it by his learning and art. A procession of old boys then shuffled out of Guildhall humming the tune to ‘Lonesome Day Blues’ (Dylan’s most Virgilian song), realising that they could have misspent their youth after all. It was a colourfully comic sight, dimmed by pathos. That was some years ago; now the movement to canonise Dylan as poet has strengthened.

Turning it over with my bare toes, it had the look and feel of finely ground coffee, typical of the island’s volcanic black beaches. I could not help but smile to myself: even the white coral sand was a myth. As a youngster, I fell in love with a 1930s book series called The Bounty Trilogy, by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall.  They introduced me to the greatest true story ever told.  The narrative is swift and vibrant, the characterisation sublime.  The book inspired the 1935 Oscar-winning film starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, and the 1962 remake, with Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando. But Nordhoff & Hall, by their own admission, were not bound by historical truth. Like countless plays and books before them, they made most of it up.

American travel writer and novelist Paul Theroux’s latest book, The Tao of Travel, is a compilation of excerpts from his own travel writings as well as those of authors such as Nabokov, Greene, Hemingway, Samuel Johnson, Chatwin and Waugh. Currently in London on a promotional tour, we chat to him during a gap in his busy schedule. What brought about The Tao of Travel, which is a bit like a logbook with entries by many different travellers? All my life, people ask me what’s my favourite book, what’s my favourite work of journalism, my favourite movies, my favourites songs. It’s very difficult to narrow things down to a Top Ten, or even a Top 100. I thought I would like to compile all the works that were personal to me. Most anthologies are just a list.

The only time in the last decade I’ve bought something other than wrapping paper from Waterstone’s was when last winter’s snow prevented my Amazon order showing up in time for Christmas. Two hardbacks cost me a whopping £22 more than I had paid online. Short of forking out £50,000 for a super-injunction I can’t imagine a less satisfying transaction. Last Friday’s news that the chain has been bought by one of Russia’s poorer oligarchs was greeted rapturously by the book industry; its new managing director James Daunt (founder of the upmarket book chain) hailed as a messiah with excellent taste in bookshelves.

  Robin Ferrers has written a wonderful and entertaining book about his life. In many ways his is a life of love; of his family, his country and of life itself. If ever there is an example of someone who personifies the essence of being an English gentleman, in terms of decency, courtesy and a mischievous sense of humour, it is Robin. There was no surprise that, when the last Labour government foolishly decided to cull all but 92 of the hereditary peers, he topped the ballot to stay in the lifeboat. He was born to life of privilege: a stately home and a title that went back to William the Conqueror, but would say that the greatest privilege of all was having a close knit family who, unlike to many of his time, loved and appreciated him.

In existence for over 250 millions years, lobsters come in two distinct varieties, ‘clawed and clawless’. Human predators tend to the flawed and clueless as they overfish and — since lobsters must be cooked live — kill them heartlessly. In existence for over 250 millions years, lobsters come in two distinct varieties, ‘clawed and clawless’. Human predators tend to the flawed and clueless as they overfish and — since lobsters must be cooked live — kill them heartlessly. Part of ‘the Edible Series’, dedicated to the global history of one type of ingredient, Lobster by Elisabeth Townsend (Reaktion Books, £9.