Culture

Peter Hoskin wrote the Bookends column for the latest issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of the blog: Did you know they once burned comic books? And in America, no less. In schoolyards. It was shortly after the end of the second world war, and legislators and parents were all shook up about what these ten-cent publications with their scenes of violence and distress were doing to the minds of their children. So on the concrete they went, in messy piles. A sprinkling of fuel, a lit match, and the fire soon caught hold. Some of the kids even cheered the flames on.

'But perhaps there was an answer, using a kind of extreme logic. My direction as a writer changed after Mary's death, and many readers thought that I became far darker. But I like to think I was much more radical, in a desperate attempt to prove that black was white, that two and two made five in the moral arithmetic of the 1960s. I was trying to construct an imaginative logic that made sense of Mary's death and would prove that the assassination of President Kennedy and he countless deaths of the Second World War had been worthwhile or even meaningful in some as yet undiscovered way. Then, perhaps, the ghosts inside my head, the old beggar under his quilt of snow, the strangled Chinese at the railway station, Kennedy and my young wife, could be laid to rest.' J. G.

Ian McEwan is in hot water with some of his lesser known fellows. A group of self-styled ‘pro-Palestinian authors’ wrote to the Guardian on Monday, and expressed their regret that McEwan will accept the biennial Jerusalem Prize. They averred that the prize, which is awarded to those who explore the theme of individual freedom in society, ‘is a cruel joke and a propaganda tool for the Israeli state.’ Some politically strident people have been cracking that cruel joke: Jorge Luis Borge, Bertrand Russell, Simone de Beauvoir, Isaiah Berlin, Susan Sontag, Eugene Ionesco, Arthur Miller, V S. Naipaul and J M. Coetzee. However, as you may have noticed, these tools of perfidious Israel’s cynicism are all dab-hands with a pen and a sheet of paper.

If you are new to Ruskin, this volume from Penguin’s ‘Great Ideas’ series is the perfect place to begin. It contains two self-contained essays, ‘The Nature of Gothic’ (from The Stones of Venice) and ‘The Work of Iron’ (a lecture he delivered at Tunbridge Wells in 1858). The two essays are short enough to be both read over in a couple of hours or so, but they cut right to the heart of Ruskin’s concerns. What do examples of good art have in common, and why should those specific qualities make them better than bad art? What is the connection between beauty and morality, and how should a well-ordered society bring them together? What does it mean to know something?

Some intriguing literary whispers did the rounds yesterday. Both the Telegraph and the Observer carried the story of Anne Robinson's imminent leap from quiz-master to literary chat-shown host. And today confirmation of such an unlikely move was confirmed by the BBC: My Life In Books, a new daily show hosted by the queen of mean is set to hit our screens with confirmed guests like the Duchess of Devonshire, P.D. James, Giles Coren and Sir Trevor McDonald.

Mark Mason has written the Bookends column in this week's issue of the Spectator. Here it is as an exclusive for this blog. One of Allan Metcalf’s contentions in OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word is that the two letters have become America’s philosophy: ‘we don’t insist that everything be perfect; OK is good enough’. It’s a pity that his book proves the point. There are occasional snippets of interest. Modern texters shorten the word to ‘k’ (how lazy can a thumb get?), while NASA were the first to lengthen it with an initial ‘A’, seeking clarity amid radio static.

With new taxes and regulations being placed on London’s financial sector, come predictions of London’s demise as a global financial centre. But an important part of London’s mythology is of a city which is repeatedly destroyed, yet always rises again. The great fire of 1666 is one of the most famous of these episodes of cyclical apocalypse. In Annus Mirabilis, written shortly after the fire, John Dryden imagines a rebuilt London rising stronger and more beautiful before. Dryden is apologetic about old London, which was “but rude and low”. Another constant feature of London’s mythology is that it’s ugly, despite its fantastic wealth. But this is through choice.