Autobiography
Folly de Grandeur, by Nicky Haslam- review
Nicky Haslam is one of our best interior designers, a charmed and charming agent of style, a tastemaker for the sometimes directionless rich, a brighter star than most of his… Read more
Bookends: Spirit of place
A new book by Ronald Blythe is something of an event. In recent years the bard of Akenfield has mostly published collections of articles, which makes At the Yeoman’s House… Read more
Low life and high style
In 1977, Roy Kerridge was a lavatory cleaner; in 1979 he was a well-known contributor to The Spectator. Yet this was no rags-to-riches discovery of a literary talent. Apart from… 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
Pig in the middle
Writing an autobiographical account of middle age is a brave undertaking, necessitating a great deal of self-scrutiny at a time of life when most of us would sooner look the… Read more
Red badge of courage
The author describes this book as an ‘auto- biographical novel’, but since it would be quite beyond me to distinguish fact from fiction in this hair-raising account of his childhood… Read more
Cambridge and after
My dread was that someone would ask me my opinion of Lermontov or Superstring Theory or the Categorical Imperatives of Kant. I would be exposed as a dull-witted fake. Having… Read more
A charismatic narcissist
In equal measure, this book is fascinating and irritating. The ‘Hi, guys!’ style grates throughout. From this, it is tempting to conclude that Tony Blair is incorrigibly insincere. But that… Read more
A foot in both camps
As a five-year-old in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem in the 1950s, Kai Bird overheard an elderly American heiress offering $1 million to anyone who could solve the Arab-Israeli conflict.… Read more
The dying of the light
The phrasing of the subtitle is exact: a memoir in blindness, not of blind- ness. Like a portrait in oils — blindness being not just the subject, but the stuff… Read more
Crisp and brave
Among my guests last weekend as I read Lord Mandelson’s book was Ben, aged two and a half. Among my guests last weekend as I read Lord Mandelson’s book was… Read more
How are you today?
How am I? Very well, thank you. Actually, now you ask, I do have this stubborn pain in the small of my back, and my right knee isn’t what it… Read more
Mountain sheep aren’t sweeter
Anyone who can speak Welsh is going to get a lot of fun from this book. Antony Woodward buys a six-acre smallholding 1200 feet up a mountain near Crickhowell in… Read more
Insufficiently honoured here
‘Next time it’s full buggery!’ said Christopher Hitchens as I helped him onto a train at Taunton station after a full luncheon of Black Label, Romanée-Conti, eel risotto and suckling… Read more
Casualties of war and peace
John Simpson quotes Humbert Wolfe’s mischievous lampoon but makes it clear that, in spite of the somewhat disobliging title of his book, he does not accept it as fair comment.… Read more
The ghost of an egoist
Very long books appear at intervals about Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Rarely do they contain anything both significant and new, and they get longer and longer. This one too… Read more
Survivor syndrome
In late middle age, William Styron was struck by a disabling illness, when everything seemed colourless, futile and empty to him. In fact, as he recalled in Darkness Visisble (1990),… Read more
Fun and games
Sport, say those who write about it, is only the toy department of daily journalism. They don’t really mean it. Some of the finest wordsmiths in what may still be… Read more
Mum, dad and the music
Bob Geldof is quoted on the cover of Gary Kemp’s autobiography with untypical succinctness: ‘Great bloke, great band, great book’. Bob Geldof is quoted on the cover of Gary Kemp’s… Read more
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