Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Thursday

Andrew Taylor

A Colder War, by Charles Cumming – review

The title of Charles Cumming’s seventh novel is both a nod to the comfortable polarities of Cold War and also a reminder that our modern world is in some ways even chillier and less stable than the one it replaced. Once again, the central character is Thomas Kell, the MI6 agent who was trying to claw his way back from unmerited disgrace in Cumming’s previous novel, A Foreign Country. Even now, Kell is still on unpaid leave — which, though tiresome for him, is convenient for Amelia, the current ‘C’. They are old colleagues and, up to a point, friends, and she knows him for what he is: a fine

Houman Barekat

From Anthony Trollope to Meryl Streep: the theatre of politics on stage and screen

On 1 October 1950 the BBC broadcast a seemingly innocuous little play by Val Gielgud. A light-hearted and critically unremarkable political comedy, Party Manners carried a number of pointed criticisms of Labour policy, taking pot shots at egalitarianism, tax-and-spend and big government. With Clement Attlee’s party enjoying only the slimmest of parliamentary majorities and a fresh election in the offing, some BBC executives feared that Party Manners might swing the balance in the Tories’ favour. Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, chair of the BBC governors and a Labour party member, cancelled a planned repeat showing, unleashing a storm in the House of Lords. The controversy evoked memories of 1906, when Harley

Marcus Berkmann

Why is ‘loo’ slang? Because Simon Heffer says so!

Did Simon Heffer’s new book come out on St George’s Day? If not, it probably should have done. If we ever needed someone to defend what’s left of our national culture from the massed armies of lefties, foreigners, proles, riff-raff, illiterates, young people, thin people and David Cameron, he would be our man. For three decades he has fought the good fight, a squat colossus of unquenchable fury, his red hair forever threatening to burst into flames, just because it can. He is one of the marvels of the age and, I now discover to my shock, exactly four days younger then me. We Cancerians have to stick together —

David Crane

Patrick Leigh Fermor and the long, daft tradition of Brits trying to save Greece

Twenty-odd years ago, while on holiday in the deep Mani at the foot of the Peloponnese, I got into conversation with an old and only partially reconstructed Greek communist shop-owner. I had been showing him a bit of pottery I had found on the sea bed at Asomati, and he wanted to know what had brought me to the Mani in the first place and was it Patrick Leigh Fermor? I said no — not strictly true — and he seemed pleased.  Leigh Fermor, he said — and he was not prepared to elaborate — had not been good for Greece. It came as something of a surprise, as in

Ali A.

Baghdad’s rise, fall – and rise again

The history of Baghdad more than any other city mirrors the ebb and flow that has marked Islamic history and civilisation. The rise and fall of empires and dynasties, the splendours of Islam’s high culture and its decline, the periodic tensions and ease that affected relations between nations and peoples, sects and faiths have all been played out in the teeming neighbourhoods, palace precincts, market areas, great mosques, educational centres and military compounds of this remarkable city. Unlike its rival Damascus, the capital of the first Muslim empire, the Umayyads, which had been established for centuries before the arrival of Islam into Syria, Baghdad was pre-eminently a city of the

Matthew Walther

The American who dreamed of peace for the Arabs – but was murdered in their midst

‘Arabist’ is fast becoming an archaism. Perhaps it is already one. These days the word conjures up enchanting visions of racy manuscripts examined over sharbat in the great domed residences of sympathetic chargés d’affaires and lone camels bumping along like single-masted cutters on a sand-dune ocean. At the age of six I dreamed of becoming one after watching David Lean’s great film for the first time. (A few weeks later I saw Jurassic Park on video and decided that I fancied palaeontology instead.) It is tempting, even for those of us who take an Israeli line, to think that had the creation of a massive pan-Arab state followed the Paris

Stephen Walsh

The yes-no-maybe world of Harrison Birtwistle

For better or worse, we live in the age of the talking composer. Some talk well, some badly, a few — the strong, silent types — keep their mouths shut, or have to have them prised open. Harrison Birtwistle belongs, by nature, to this last category. I once, a very long time ago, interviewed him for a radio programme, mercifully pre-recorded. Each tedious enquiry would be greeted by a long silence ending with a yes or a no or an ‘I don’t understand the question.’ Nothing would persuade him to contribute to my attempts at fitting him into some preconceived image of British music in the late 1960s. Fitting them

Cressida Connolly

My desert island poet

If I had to be marooned on a desert island with a stranger, that stranger would be John Burnside. Not that he’s a literary Ray Mears: I rather doubt that catching fish with his bare hands or lighting a fire without matches are among his skills. Nor would he be an easy companion, since by his own account he is a brooder and an insomniac and a craver of solitude. He is the erstwhile resident of a mental institution. He also has complicated feelings about women. But he’d be my perfect companion, still. For one thing, the isle would be full of sounds and sweet airs that give delight, because

Thursday

Nigel Farndale

Why it’s time for a Cad of the Year Award

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_22_May_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Harry Cole and Camilla Swift debate the return of the cad” startat=1527] Listen [/audioplayer]Plans are afoot to introduce the Flashman novels, those politically incorrect celebrations of cowardice, bad form and caddish behaviour, to a new generation of readers. But according to Sarah Montague on the Today programme, ‘Flashman is not typical of our times.’ Is she correct? I can think of quite a few latterday Flashmans off the top of my head, such as Fred ‘The Shred’ Goodwin, whose knighthood had to be prised from his cold Scottish fingers. Not only did Fred keep his pension millions when all about him were losing theirs, he also had an

Cressida Connolly

No one would want to live in Jane Gardam’s stories – but they’re an amazing place to visit

In the world of Jane Gardam’s stories the past is always present, solid and often unwanted and always too big, like a heavy antique sideboard crammed into a modern retirement flat. Her characters are easily imagined surrounded by such furniture, among them ex-pats returning after careers in Hong Kong or India, their houses full of the sad paraphernalia of former empire: elephant’s foot umbrella stands or old watercolours of Bengal. Many are seeing out their days in some poverty and solitude, occasionally visited but seldom comforted by their resentful grown-up children. There is no saccharine here. Relations between offspring and parents are marked by mutual disdain and almost wilful misunderstanding,

Thomas W. Hodgkinson

The man who went to Hell and back – for a laugh

Since the passing of Auberon Waugh, there haven’t been many really successful right-wing comedians. The Mayor of London is one. Another is the American journalist and wit P.J. O’Rourke. The alliterative title of The Baby Boom, his 20th book, essentially sums up its author’s style, his childlike boisterousness, his resonant infantilism. Its scarcely less suitable subtitle — ‘How It Got That Way, And It Wasn’t My Fault, And I’ll Never Do It Again’— is almost as revealing, indicating a man engaged in a conversation with himself and determined to have the last word. Here his professed subject matter is the generation of Americans born between 1946 and 1964: the lucky

Juliet Townsend

The fairytale life of Hans Christian Andersen

It has long been my habit, when approaching a new biography, to read the account of the subject’s childhood first, then jump to the deathbed, before settling down to the main narrative between. It was rather disconcerting, therefore, to find that Paul Binding’s life of Hans Christian Andersen eschews the deathbed and ends with the author’s last, not very cheering, written words rather than his last breath: The brewer is dead, Auntie is dead, the student is dead, him whose sparks of ideas ended up in the rubbish bin. Everything ends up in the rubbish bin. It is only in the chronology that we learn that Andersen’s 70th birthday was

Ferdinand Mount

Piketty’s decaff Marxism would be just as oppressive and intrusive as the old variety

If a title works once, the chances are it will work again. Half the punch of Marx’s masterwork is in its name. Better in German of course, with the kick of the K and the ominous echo of Kaput. But even in English when blocked out in red caps on a  fat spine, CAPITAL sends a thrill along any bookshelf. Its fond midwives at Harvard can scarcely have expected to sell 200,000 copies of a 600-page treatise by a French economist unknown in the English-speaking world, but that only shows we must never underestimate the beauty of telling the target audience what it wishes to hear — in this case,

Philip Hensher

The wit, wisdom and womanising of Constant Lambert

We owe Constant Lambert (1905–1951) a huge amount, and the flashes of brilliance that survive from his short life only suggest the energy with which he established the possibilities for English culture. What we remember about this extraordinary man are some delightful pieces of music, especially The Rio Grande; the funniest and most cultivated book about contemporary music ever written, Music Ho!; and a few surviving recordings of his work as a conductor. Before his death, aged 46, from chronic alcoholism and undiagnosed diabetes, he had established the Sadler’s Wells Ballet with Ninette de Valois and Frederick Ashton; in the trio, he was not only the conductor and musical expert,

Christopher Maclehose

The derring-do that created Flashman

I met George Macdonald Fraser when he was the features editor of the Glasgow Herald. He was a very good newspaperman on what was a fine daily paper. James Holburn was the editor, Reggie Byers his deputy, Chris Small the literary editor, all admirable and amiable journalists. When Holburn retired, Fraser was for a while acting editor and should have been made editor and would have been fair and fearless. Had he tired of the daily grind he might have become cantankerous; but his devoted readers and Hollywood would only have had to wait another 20 years for the flowering of his prodigious talents. When I left the Glasgow Herald,

Thursday

Eliza Manningham-Buller

The Foreign Office’s long war on women

I faltered during the preface to this account of the rise of the female (British) diplomat. Helen McCarthy, a historian at London University’s Queen Mary college, describes herself as being drawn to this subject by meeting diplomats (male) who were ‘bloody brilliant’. I feared a breathlessly deferential narrative. Then, as I started reading the text itself, I found myself getting scratchy at minor errors — titles and the like — and had I not promised to write a review, I should have switched to a thriller on my Kindle. However, I plugged on, and was glad I had persevered, although I found the book patchy. Some parts are fascinating; others,

Lee Langley

A lost treasure of Japanese fiction – pocket-sized but world class

Think haiku, netsuke, moss gardens… Small is beautiful. Japanese art, a scholar of the culture once commented, is great in small things. Pushkin Press has a track record for bringing foreign language works, classic and contemporary, to a British readership, and with this pocket-sized, elegant duo they celebrate a modern Japanese master virtually unknown here. Yasushi Inoue, one of Japan’s major literary figures, wrote his first novel, The Hunting Gun, in 1949, followed immediately by Bullfight. After 20 years as a journalist and literary editor, he was stepping into fiction. By the time he died in 1997 he had written 50 novels and nearly 200 short stories and novellas. Of

Stephen Bayley

Ettore Sottsass, Jnr: more than just a funny name

Personally, I have always been sensitive about a credibility gap, a difference in prestige, between literary and visual cultures.  More than 30 years ago, Frederic Raphael wrote a teasing piece in the TLS mentioning an Italian designer with a funny name, as if to disparage design as a whole. I boldly wrote in defence and, surprisingly, my letter was published. That designer was Ettore Sottsass, Jnr (1917–2007). The ‘Jnr’ was not mere affectation, although there was a bit of that. His identically named father had also been a distinguished architect. (The curious name is Romansch, meaning ‘under the stone’). Sottsass, born in what used to be Austria before it was

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

The Snow Queen crawls at snail’s pace – and you wouldn’t want it any other way

For all would-be novelists whose stumbling block is that they can’t resist describing every single sensation in depth — the smell of a bedroom, the sound of a door closing, the feel of a sofa, the experience of getting in and out of a bath — and who therefore find it hard to push a plot along, Michael Cunningham’s new novel is a masterclass.  The Pulitzer-prizewinning author of The Hours (in which three-quarters of a page is taken up with an unforgettable description of the armchair of an ill man) is a chronic over-describer. In this new novel about the lives and anxieties of two brothers in their forties, Tyler

Amanda Craig

Depression – an agony more powerful than love

Rachel Kelly, a respected former journalist on the Times, might seem the most blessed of women: five children, marriage to the banker Sebastian Grigg and a large house in Notting Hill. However, soon after her second child was born she suffered a breakdown of a most acute kind. Terrified, and in such distress that all she could keep saying over and over was ‘I’m going to crash,’ her account of her illness is harrowing to read. It follows the Turkish novelist Elif Shafak’s recent description of her post-natal depression, Black Milk, Stephanie Merritt’s 2008 memoir The Devil Within and Andrew Solomon’s masterly The Noonday Demon. All follow a particular pattern,