The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The Paris Review has surpassed itself yet again, with a brief memoir by photographer Paul McDonough. His photos and writing depict metropolitan life as it is predominantly lived: in a constant motion of coming and going. For McDonough, there is no such thing as still life. The actors in a city’s exterior space may or
When they found Hans Blix dead, his throat was slit and his tongue was pulled through the hole, an arrangement apparently known as a ‘Cuban necktie’. William Gibson did not do the deed – it was the work of an overenthusiastic hit man – and nor is he the person who commissioned the hit; their
‘Oh my human brothers let me tell you how it happened,’ begs SS officer Max Aue, the narrator at the beginning of Jonathan Littell’s Holocaust novel The Kindly Ones. It is a book about the nature of evil. Simply memorialising the Holocaust, Littell says, always through the mouth of Aue, has relegated the killers to
So just how good is it? Because of course those splendid people, the Man Booker judges, have rather prejudiced this review by going and giving their prize to Jacobson’s latest. If only they’d had the patience to wait for the launch of this blog. Because although not on the panel this year (September is such
Flesh. Lots of flesh. That was the simple promise of a Hammer horror film. In this collection of classic Hammer posters (The Art of Hammer by Marcus Hearn, Titan, £24.99) we have cleavages, writhing torsos and shining thighs aplenty. But it’s not just that kind of flesh. Over most of our female subjects leers a
Tolstoy’s legend is not what it was; but sometimes the world needs idealised versions of ordinary men, argues Philip Hensher The truism that Tolstoy was the greatest of novelists hasn’t been seriously questioned in the last century. The nearest competition comes from Proust and Thomas Mann, I suppose. But when you compare two similar moments
This is an effervescent, elegantly written and faultlessly researched romp through the life and times of someone whose name in Britain was spoken with genuine fondness by an urbane few, with self-righteous anger by some and with disdain or fascination by almost everybody who can read — as, like it or not, very few people
This is a companion to a collection published earlier this year of Nadine Gordimer’s non-fiction, called Telling Times. This is a companion to a collection published earlier this year of Nadine Gordimer’s non-fiction, called Telling Times. Short stories are, of all her endeavours, the most successful. Their heyday was in the Seventies, when they perfectly
There was a time when detailed case histories, including direct quotations from patients’ accounts of their own experiences, formed a significant part of the medical literature. There was a time when detailed case histories, including direct quotations from patients’ accounts of their own experiences, formed a significant part of the medical literature. French doctors of
Some years ago now I bought from the artist Robert Buhler a pastel portrait of the composer Lennox Berkeley (reproduced above). Since I knew neither of the two men well (although in the case of each I admired the work without having an irresistible enthusiasm for it), even today people often ask me why I
By the 1970s Ronald Fraser had established himself as an expert on modern Spain and an authority on its oral history, when that discipline was an exotic new concept. As a radical socialist, and a friend of the Marxist historian Perry Anderson, he published a series of distinguished books on popular risings and guerrilla warfare
A great time ago when the world was young there was a pleasant and harmless custom by which a British ambassador when leaving his post could sit down and write a valedictory dispatch to the Foreign Secretary. This was not compulsory; often an ambassador withheld his opinions until he was leaving not just a particular
Bettany Hughes is the Nigella Lawson of the classical world — all tumbling raven curls and smoky-voiced seduction, as she takes telly viewers through the greatest hits of the olden days; recent programmes have covered the Spartans, Athens and the Bible. Bettany Hughes is the Nigella Lawson of the classical world — all tumbling raven
In Victorian and Edwardian England architects did not get themselves murdered. They weren’t playboys, they didn’t have it off with their clients’ wives, they were in no way fashionable even if designing for fashionable people.They were solid members of the professional classes. Lutyens, with his grand marriage and his socialising, was an exception, but his
There’s nothing like a really good wallow in nostalgia. There’s nothing like a really good wallow in nostalgia. And if it can be arranged so that the nostalgia is for a time that never was, that’s even better. So it is hardly surprising that when, after the horrors of the first world war, Princess Marie
Jacques Bonnet is a distinguished French art historian and novelist who has amassed a private library of 40,000 volumes (around double the number contained in the average Waterstones). Phantoms on the Bookshelves is Bonnet’s meditation on a life lived with so many books. Particularly pressing is the matter of classification. ‘Should I put Norbert Elias’s
I visited the Hebridean island of Canna in May 2008 — Canna being John Lorne Campbell’s island, donated by him to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 — and was immediately struck by three things, all of which presented a considerable contrast to the island of Colonsay, some little way to the south, where
Blair Worden J.R. Maddicott’s The Origins of the English Parliament 924–1327 (OUP, £30) is not one for the bedside, but its wide and profound scholarship has much to teach us about the roots and functions of an institution now subjected to so much unhistorical criticism. Nicholas Phillipson’s Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (Allen Lane, £25)
Every Friday, on the Spectator Book Blog, we’ll be publishing the latest Bookends column from the magazine. For those who haven’t come across the column before, it’s a 250-word review of a recent book – somewhat shorter than the rest of the reviews in the print edition – and well-suited to the blog format. Anyway,
It hardly feels like 50 years ago that Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly tripped her way into cinematic folklore on her journey to become a timeless icon. In her little Givenchy black dress and long cigarette holder, Holly has endured dramatically and improbably. But then, the Holly Golightly’s of this world are improbable girls to begin
So, you thought you knew Dubya? His memoir has leapt to the top of the sellers’ charts (£) in the States and The Spectator is publishing a comprehensive review by Sir Christopher Meyer next week. But, judging by extracts in the Times’ serialisation, Bush’s ghostwriter Christopher Michel (the former President’s premier speech writer) has done
I haven’t read Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, for lack of opportunity rather than lack of will. However, the loud critical response has not escaped me. How could it? The Corrections and Freedom have both been crowned with the thorns of being a ‘Great American Novel’; and he is the celebrated author of the moment, gracing the
There is an evil genius in Peckham Library. Not among the patrons: the book stock is sound enough, but, were you researching a plan for world domination, you’d want more extensive reference shelves and perhaps quicker Wi-Fi. No, the evil genius is on the staff. He or she was responsible for the offer that
Ageing roué Michel Houellebecq, the Serge Gainsbourg of the literary world, has won France’s most prestigious literary prize for his latest novel, La Carte et le Territoire (The Map and the Territory). Not before time, his supporters will say. But, then again, Houellebecq has long polarised opinion, and Les Cartes et le Territoire – featuring
Just a quick post to point CoffeeHousers in the direction of the new Spectator Book Blog (or http://spectator.com/books/blog/). In addition to the in-house team, the new blog will host independent bloggers and writers, providing a wide range of book reviews and discussion topics. And, as ever, the comments section is yours. The Book Blog will
Rhys Tranter writes the A Piece of Monologue blog. Here is his first collaboration with the Spectator Book Blog. You might be forgiven for considering Don DeLillo’s White Noise as a survival manual for contemporary life. Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the novel’s relevance continues as a philosophical checklist of twenty-first century culture. On its
There are few heretics before the Church of Ian McEwan, but Thomas Jones’ uses his review of Solar in the London Review of Books to make two points. Monomania is a feature of English writing – think motherhood to Mrs Bennett, hypochondria to Mr Wodehouse or climate change to James Delingpole. McEwan is unusual in
“Thought provoking, well designed, short.” ‘Well, that last one is a good thing,’ says a friend who takes about five years to finish one novel. And on this occasion I agree. Peirene Press seek out acclaimed European short literature (never more than 200 pages) and revel in translating it. Peirene’s canon is also short, only
When David Cameron unveiled his plans for a ‘Big Society’, transferring power from ‘the elite in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street’, Ed Miliband accused him of wanting to drag the welfare state back to Victorian times. Presumably he feared a Tory Britain in which a latter-day David Copperfield was left to