Culture

I see from the cover of this book that at least three reviewers had kind words to say about Gordon Brown’s previous effort. ‘Very moving,’ the Guardian wrote. ‘Readable and intelligent,’ alleged the Sunday Times. ‘Trust me: this is a fine book,’ claimed The Spectator. Perhaps they were being polite because the author is not a professional writer, or because all his royalties will go to charity. Perhaps Courage was a dramatically better book. Wartime Courage, though, is lame. And I’m not just saying that because Gordon Brown’s economic incompetence has caused me such misery.

Our live chat with the Booker-nominated author Philip Hensher will be kicking off in about fifteen minutes over at the online Book Club.  So, if you're a fan of Philip's work, a bibliophile or just stuck for something to do, do come and join us between 19:30 and 20:15.  You can take part by clicking on to this page.

In his latest Life&Letters column for the Spectator, my father has some fun imagining how different novelists might have treated the Curious Affair of Mandelson, Osbourne, Deripaska and Rothschild. For instance: Somerset Maugham, for instance, would have told it straight, dead-pan, through his favourite disillusioned, mildly cynical, narrator — old Mr Maugham himself, scarcely disguised — and would have presented it as an example of human folly. His focus would have been on Osborne, depicted as a callow young man of dangerous sincerity.

Sam Leith Richard Price’s meaty and fabulously enjoyable police procedural, Lush Life (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is a book I have pressed on a lot of friends. The new Robert B. Parker, Rough Weather (Quercus, £16.99), is bliss, too, because it has Spenser, Hawk and the Gray Man in it. Short stories from Kurt Vonnegut (Armageddon in Retrospect, Cape, £16.99), and Annie Proulx (Fine Just The Way It Is, 4th Estate, £14.99) were moving, funny and wise. In politics, Robert Kagan’s The Return of History and the End of Dreams (Atlantic, £12.

Wellington, by Jane Wellesley There can never be too many biographies of the Duke of Wellington because, like Churchill’s and Nelson’s, his career path is so extraordinary, uplifting, chequered and involving that it reads more like (slightly overwrought) fiction than fact. The first thing you’d give your mildly implausible hero if you were a novelist or Hollywood screenwriter would be a miserable childhood, a sensitive nature and a sense of burning grievance. That way, the audience would like him, identify with him, and feel all the more happy when he triumphed over adversity. So it was with young Arthur Wellesley.

With regard to the previous post, indefatigable commenter NDM has this to say: John Galt's The Member and The Radical, available in a handy combined edition from Canongate, are also interesting on this topic. Talking of Galt, I was once driving along one of America's more boring interstates when I saw a bumper sticker with "Ask me, who is John Galt?" I'm thinking why does this car have a bumper sticker about a long-dead and not overly fashionable Scottish novelist. At that time I didn't know about the ever-fashionable Ayn Rand cult. Readers are invited to supply further examples of bumper-sticker confusion.

Earlier this week, we launched the online Spectator Book Club.  You can access it by clicking here; clicking on the Book Club tab at the top of any Spectator.co.uk page; or by entering new.spectator.co.uk/books into your address bar.  Once there, you'll find a host of content to satisfy even the most ardent booklover - from a discussion board and Book of the Month choices, to live chats with authors and a directory of local booksellers.  This month's Book of the Month is Richard Holmes's 'The Age of Wonder', while the Live Chat will be with the Booker-nominated Phillip Hensher.  Click here and here for more information. Spectator Book Club is also hosting a monthly competition, by which you can get your writing in the print edition of The Spectator.