Book Reviews

Wilfred Owen, the poet whose work epitomises the horror of the First World War for most people in modern Britain, was born in Oswestry in the Shropshire Marches, close to his Welsh ancestral homeland, one hundred and twenty-one years ago today. His brief life ended just a quarter of a century later, on November 4th 1918, when he was cut down by a German machine gun as he heroically led his men across the Sambre-Oise canal in the sort of suicidal attack that his poetry had implicitly criticised. Famously, the telegram announcing his death arrived at his parents’ home in Shrewsbury at the exact moment when the bells were ringing

For a man who claims to be apathetic about politics, Russell Brand is rather noisy. Not content with guest editing the New Statesman and getting crucified by Jeremy Paxman, all in the name of his revolutionary cause, Brand is now writing a political book. ‘People keep asking me how The Revolution will work?’ ‘We all want to bring down the government and establish a personal and global utopia, but how?’ they ask. Well, in this book, I’m going to explain it.’ I suggest the title of Das Krapital.

The British Library isn’t the first place I associate with contemporary fiction. For me, it’s about the Tudor manuscripts: the support and expertise of the manuscript room staff is second to none, and to the academic mind, few thrills compare to finding Elizabeth I’s distinctive handwriting on an unexpected document, or deciphering treacherous correspondence in a prayer book. But DBC Pierre it sure ain’t. Yet under the alert leadership of Roly Keating, the man who put BBC Four on the map, the British Library is now carefully fostering a commitment to living writers, not merely the dusty and dead. In a masterstroke of curation, when I leave the manuscript room,

A week or two ago, author Philip Hoare wrote an article for the Independent, describing Derek Jarman as ‘a modern-day John Dee, the Elizabethan alchemist’, ‘an Edwardian Andy Warhol, a Victorian Jean Cocteau’ (huh?), and, inevitably, ‘a national treasure’. It’s symptomatic of the way that artists, writers and celebrities of a certain age haven’t been able to stop themselves gushing over his vision, his garden in Dungeness and how absolutely lovely he was. They don’t ever talk about his films, though – and with good reason. Maybe I’m missing something marvellous, but I’ve just suffered Blue, Jarman’s self-conscious Definitive Artistic Statement, for the third time in five years. If you’ve

Spectator literary competition No. 2840 You were excellent this week on the horrors of the reunion dinner. But these gatherings no longer have the allure they once enjoyed. While in days gone by, they offered the opportunity to see, and, more enjoyably, to assess, former classmates in their adult incarnations, in an age of social media no one really loses touch and that element of mystery is all but gone. We’ve seen the pictures and read the status updates. Albert Black, Rob Stuart and Peter Goulding are all highly commended. The winners take £25 each and the extra fiver belongs to Alan Millard. Alan Millard ‘Good evening, sir, wind down

‘On the whole I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings whom you think are sadly mistaken,’ said Penelope Fitzgerald in 1987. The South African novelist Damon Galgut has reversed this formula — with mixed results. He has written a novel about a fellow novelist, E.M. Forster, using episodes and quotations taken from a conscientious reading of biographies, diaries and letters. He salutes Forster as a writer and commends his humanity; but it is not clear whether he thinks Forster was sadly mistaken in his sexual bearings or lame in his choices. Arctic Summer opens with Forster travelling with his fellow