Patrick Skene Catling 
A hero of folk
‘This Machine Kills Fascists’ was the ambitious slogan that Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) painted on his guitars. By fascists he meant the entire American capitalist establishment during the Great Depression and… Read more
Pig in the middle
With nice ecumenical parity, Peter Somerville-Large derides equally both Ireland’s principal Christian churches as they compete for the soul, or at least the membership, of young Paul Blake-Willoughby. His discordant… Read more
Bionic bore
After wading through 646 pages of narcissistic gush and breathtaking vulgarity in the accents of Dr Kissinger and Dr Strangelove, I am consoled by the thought that the ordeal has… Read more
Thrills and spills
The singer of the ‘Lumberjack Song’, vendor of the Dead Parrot and leader of the Spanish Inquisition has written another novel. It is Michael Palin’s second, called The Truth. On… Read more
Swinging into action
Whereas it is generally agreed that music has charms to soothe a savage breast, Congreve might have added that music also has the power to inflame bellicose fervour. Patrick Bade,… Read more
Bookends: Prep-school passions
In his introductory eulogy, Peter Parker calls In the Making: The Story of a Childhood (Penguin, £8.99) G. F. Green’s masterpiece, which, though not popular, attracted the admiration of E.M.… Read more
Travel Special – Grenada: Fit for a prince
Having visited most of the islands of the Caribbean when they were British colonies and since they were granted independence, I am convinced that Grenada, in the far south-east, is… Read more
Time to sit and stare
Hermitic, oneiric withdrawal from responsibilities and threats is the most effective way of alleviating the pangs of middle age, suggests Marcus Berkmann. In his fifties, he is a frank and… Read more
A serenely contented writer
Beaming Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, D.Litt. (Oxon), Mark Twain medallist and co-founder of the Hollywood Cricket Club (1881-1975), personified a rare oxymoron: he was a serenely contented writer. Shortly… Read more
A literary curio
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac, better known as Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), the son of French-Canadians spiced with the blood of Mohawk and Caughnawaga Indians and subdued, no doubt, by migration from… Read more
Bookends: The Jazz Baroness
She was born Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild. Her father, Nathaniel Charles Rothschild, an ardent lepidopterist, named her Pannonica, Nica for short, as a tribute to the region in Hungary where… Read more
A well-told lie
Autobiography provides a sound foundation for a work mainly of fiction. A voyage in an ocean liner provides a sound framework of time and place. Michael Ondaatje was born in… Read more
Beatrix Potter meets the Marquis de Sade
Anthropomorphism and a weird, astringent sense of humour combined to make The Queue, the late Jonathan Barrow’s only novel, a work of genius in the opinion of his brother Andrew.… Read more
On the charm offensive
Derek Hill (1916–2000), writes Bruce Arnold, was an English representational landscape and portrait painter of ‘haunting and evocative creative spirituality that is perhaps indefinable’. Derek Hill (1916–2000), writes Bruce Arnold,… Read more
Nothing like a Dame
Kafka was right: ‘Strange how make-believe, if engaged in systematically enough, can change into reality.’ But Barry Humphries, at the age of 76, manages much of the time to control… Read more
Mud, blood and jungle rot
The Matterhorn, at 14,679 feet in the Alps, is said to be very difficult to climb. It is an apt military designation for a (fictional) jungle peak that United States… Read more
High priest of bop
In the Rainbow Grill in New York one evening in 1971, according to Robin D. G. Kelley, Professor of History and American Studies at the University of Southern California, Duke… Read more
The Knights of Glin
In this splendid, monumental slab of a book, Desmond Fitzgerald, the 29th Knight of Glin, has made the chronicle of his family epitomise the whole turbulent history of Ireland since… Read more
A literary gypsy
When Lavinia Greacen undertook her magisterial yet intimately sympathetic biography of James Gordon Farrell, she gained access to his diaries and many of his letters, especially love letters and letters… Read more
Latest blogs
- Andrew Feldman denies calling Tory activists ‘swivel-eyed loons’ Fraser Nelson
- The swivel-eyed loons in the Conservative party are revolting. And they are right to revolt. Alex Massie
- Top Tory calls party activists ‘mad swivel-eyed loons’ James Forsyth
- Spectator Play: what’s worth watching, listening to or going to this weekend Camilla Swift
- Hammond on manoeuvres? The other Tory MPs who fancy a crack at the leadership Isabel Hardman
- Some anti-fascists are very fascistic Douglas Murray
- What Gove should know about Singapore schools Clarissa Tan
