Book Reviews

However often rehearsed, the facts remain eye-popping. Inequality has bolted out of control over the last three decades. Democracy has proved increasingly powerless to check the unaccountable runaway oligarchy that fails even to pay its taxes. Ferdinand Mount gives a lucid account of political decay alongside all this looting, a disengaged electorate and a cult of leadership in hock to overmighty media oligarchs, all ominously suggestive of the decline and fall of the Roman empire. When a Tory tells the story, it’s far more compelling than any left-winger. Mount was head of Margaret Thatcher’s Policy Unit from 1982 to 1984 and a director of the then most influential Tory think-tank,

Jeremy Clarke, our Low Life correspondent, has sobered up to answer our impertinent questions this week. His latest book, One Middle Aged Man in Search of The Point, is available in hardback. 1) What are you reading at the moment? Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader 2) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Richmal Crompton, E Nesbit 3) Has a book ever made you cry, and if so which one? No book has so far, but a Dickens journalism piece called A Walk in the Workhouse usually makes my eyes prick a bit 4) You are about to be put into solitary confinement for a year

Some war veterans slip back into civilian life with reasonable ease, stiff of limb, stiff of upper lip. If at first it’s a case of concealment and self-restraint, there’s at least some chance that play-acting can infiltrate reality. The protagonist of Toni Morrison’s new novel, Home, is called Frank Money. He has just returned to his native town in Georgia from fighting in the Korean War, and discovered that he has no true home. He’s always known he has no money. He tries to overcome the wartime memories he’s carried with him from Korea, but when does a coping mechanism become just a lie? And a lie yet another thing

‘A Short Song of Congratulation’  Long-expected one and twenty Ling’ring year, at last is flown, Pomp and Pleasure, Pride and Plenty Great Sir John, are all your own. Loosen’d from the Minor’s tether, Free to mortgage or to sell, Wild as wind, and light as feather Bid the slaves of thrift farewel. Call the Bettys, Kates, and Jennys Ev’ry name that laughs at Care, Lavish of your Grandsire’s guineas, Show the Spirit of an heir. All that prey on vice and folly Joy to see their quarry fly, Here the Gamester light and jolly There the Lender grave and sly. Wealth, Sir John, was made to wander, Let it wander

Nigeria is called ‘God’s own country’, and well it might be because no one else is on its side. Eliza Griswold, who has spent several years exploring religious divisions in the country’s interior, tells me that billions of oil dollars are embezzled each year, leaving the vast majority of the population to fend for themselves on a couple of dollars a day — that’s to say nothing of the millions of unemployed vagrants. The government oscillates between inertia and rapacity, so competing religious organisations have emerged in its place. But while religious communities provide legal services and schools, they can also incite sectarian violence as Nigerians contest their country’s dwindling