Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Geoffrey Blainey

Identity politics

In the past half century, much ingenuity and humdrum effort has gone into redefining Australia as a nation. Politicians, intellectuals and advertisers have joined in the game of searching or ‘yearning for an identity’. The phrase ‘national identity’, now a bit boring, arrived only in the 1950s. In their thoughtful book, James Curran and Stuart Ward argue that this game was inspired by the global decline of Britain, the withdrawing of British forces from Asia, the coupling of Westminster with the European Union and the feeling that Australians were becoming ‘abandoned Britons’. It should be added that Australia was also abandoning Britain. The dramatic swing in Australian trade from Britain

Anne Applebaum

Proscribed reading

In 1948, Poland’s new communist government was badly in need of legitimacy and desperate for international recognition. So they did what any self-respecting left-wing government would do, back in those days, in order to win a bit of respect; they held a cultural Congress. In 1948, Poland’s new communist government was badly in need of legitimacy and desperate for international recognition. So they did what any self-respecting left-wing government would do, back in those days, in order to win a bit of respect; they held a cultural Congress. They invited Picasso, A. J. P. Taylor, Aldous Huxley, a host of prominent Soviet literary bureaucrats and whichever left-leaning writers they could

Ian Dunlop

The perfect stranger

There are an estimated 417,000 people in the UK suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and double that number suffering from other forms of dementia. There are an estimated 417,000 people in the UK suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and double that number suffering from other forms of dementia. Potentially there are a large number of readers for John Suchet’s touchingly honest account of his wife’s slide into dementia, but — and here is the irony — it will not be the victims themselves of these diseases who will perhaps find comfort or insight from his book but the million or more carers who look after them. John Suchet is a famous television

Andrew Taylor

Recent crime novels | 17 July 2010

Michael Ridpath, best known for his excellent financial thrillers, explores new territory in Where the Shadows Lie, which combines elements of the American cop crime novel with J. R. R. Tolkein and post-credit-crunch Iceland. Magnus, a detective with the Boston Police Department, is a key prosecution witness in a case that may bring down a Dominican drug gang. For his own safety, he’s temporarily transferred to Iceland to advise their police department on modern criminal methods. He’s promptly provided with work experience — the killing of a philandering academic. Why did a suspicious Yorkshire truck driver with a fetish for Tolkein have an appointment with the dead man? How does

Mark Mason

Teed off

There are those of us who, asked if we play golf, reply: ‘No, I like women.’ A relaxing game in pleasant surroundings it may be. There are those of us who, asked if we play golf, reply: ‘No, I like women.’ A relaxing game in pleasant surroundings it may be. But that disappears under a landslide of regulations about shirt collars and footwear, penned by men who boast of ‘values’ yet are happy only when everyone in sight is Exactly Like Them, and not just in terms of gender. Maurice Flitcroft loved the game with a passion. Regulations less so. A crane driver at Vickers shipyard in Barrow, Flitcroft reached

Thursday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Great Political Feuds: Hawke vs Keating

As Danny Finkelstein tweets, never mind Blair vs Brown vs Mandelson, the feud between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating is just as entertaining. The latest outbreak of fighting has been caused by a new biography of Hawke, written by his wife. Keating does not approve of its depiction of their time in government. As this letter to Hawke demonstrates: Dear Bob, It was with much disappointment that I opened The Weekend Australian to find on page three the headline “Hawke’s take on ditherer Keating and lying Richo” and to read at the first line that either you or Blanche had described me as “an ailing vacillator”. As you know, I

Saturday

Florence Odonoghue

A cousin across the water

Though he was to live at Castle Leslie in Co. Monaghan, Sir John Randalph (later Shane) Leslie, cousin of Winston Churchill, was born at Stratford House, London, in 1885 though baptised at Glaslough with Lord Randolph Churchill as godfather. Though he was to live at Castle Leslie in Co. Monaghan, Sir John Randalph (later Shane) Leslie, cousin of Winston Churchill, was born at Stratford House, London, in 1885 though baptised at Glaslough with Lord Randolph Churchill as godfather. After Eton and King’s, Cambridge, Shane, at Churchill’s bidding, stood as a Home Ruler for Londonderry City in both the 1910 general elections. He lost each time by about 100 votes to

Wednesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Questionable Claim of the Day

From Jonathan Jones in the Guardian: Surely if the novel in English has a master now at the peak of his powers, it is Ian McEwan. It doesn’t and he isn’t. This follows an equally dubious claim: Any honest fan of modern fiction has to acknowledge the supremacy of American writers since the 1960s. For this particular British reader, to discover the novels of Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon, in particular, was to be released from the tongue-tied mumblings of postwar English fiction into a new world of generous imaginative reach and exuberant language. Oh really? In the first place the notion that there’s some kind of unofficial competition between

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Learning to live with the bomb

The call consisted of three short blows of breath. A minute later, the phone rang again. Once more: three short blows of breath. Mr Cowell, under diplomatic cover, was the MI6 handler for Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, the West’s single most important asset in the Kremlin — and the calls he took were the prearranged code that Penkovsky was to use to tell him that a Soviet nuclear attack on the West was imminent. I’d have shat a brick. Wouldn’t you? But Cowell kept his cool. He didn’t call London and get the counterstrike underway. He didn’t put his head between his knees and wait for oblivion. The sky could have

John R. MacArthur

King and his killer

In the late days of the Bush administration, it was fashionable among liberals to call George W. Bush the ‘worst’ president since the founding of the republic and to suggest that under his leadership America experienced its own version of the Dark Ages. In the late days of the Bush administration, it was fashionable among liberals to call George W. Bush the ‘worst’ president since the founding of the republic and to suggest that under his leadership America experienced its own version of the Dark Ages. Even allowing for Bush’s considerable ignorance and malevolent world view, those contemporary doomsayers had forgotten recent history. As bad as the Bush era was,

D J-Taylor

Physical and spiritual decay

The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The bloom of youth barely had time to settle before it was overrun by maggots. Thus, coolly appraising his mistress’s somewhat faded charms, Hilary Fletcher in The Upstart (1973) notes that marriage and children ‘had loosened her bones and skin and clouded those once fresh eyes with the film of age.’ Harriet, it turns out, is all of 26. Strickland, the barrister hero of A Married Man (1979) has an even worse time of it, what

Eric Christiansen

Hunting and working

Why are scholars so prone to melancholy? According to the expert, Robert Burton of Christ Church, it is because ‘they live a sedentary, solitary life… Why are scholars so prone to melancholy? According to the expert, Robert Burton of Christ Church, it is because ‘they live a sedentary, solitary life… free from bodily exercise and those ordinary disports that other men use.’ Not this one. The most remarkable characteristic of the young and maturing Trevor-Roper was his frenzied pursuit of foxes and hares on horse and foot, and his capacity for long marches through Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and the Borders in search of spiritual refreshment or a rendez-vous with a horse.

James Walton

Frustrating but enjoyable

If we didn’t already know that Milan Kundera is one of Craig Raine’s literary heroes, then it wouldn’t be too hard to work it out from his first novel. If we didn’t already know that Milan Kundera is one of Craig Raine’s literary heroes, then it wouldn’t be too hard to work it out from his first novel. As in Kundera’s later fiction (Immortality, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance), there’s the stark one-word title laying out the theme to be interrogated. There’s the same relentless erudition — so that even Raine’s two-page thematic scene-setter finds room for Dickens, Beckett, Auden and Henry James. More obviously still, there’s the same mix of straight

Marcus Berkmann

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 might be, and I think I have a little arthritis in my left foot, and… what do you expect? I’m in my late forties, and I may be even older by the time you read this. I still have my hair and my teeth, but my days of niggle-free, hangoverless, unthinking good health are gone forever. Tim Parks was a couple of years older than I am now when he started to experience acute pain in his bladder region. He

Giles Foden

The lure of adventure

A few minutes’ walk from Paddington Station is a drinking den and restaurant called the Frontline Club, a members’ club for foreign correspondents. A few minutes’ walk from Paddington Station is a drinking den and restaurant called the Frontline Club, a members’ club for foreign correspondents. Among the characters you might find banging on the bar, wedged between Rick Beeston of the Times, Jason Burke of the Observer, and gentleman freelancers such as Aidan Hartley or Sam Kiley, is James Brabazon, an award-winning documentary filmmaker specialising in war zones. Though there are plenty of female stars, such as the redoubtable Marie Colvin, with her fantastic hair and piratical eye-patch, this

Tuesday

David Blackburn

In the name of God go

If you think your life’s an unremitting tragedy, pity the proof reader at Gordon Brown’s publisher. The late and unlamented Prime Minister has been out of office for 58 days, typing 10,000 words a day. That’s 580,000 words already. Tolstoy took 4 years and 460,000 words to write War and Peace, Cervantes needed 10 years and nearly 500,000 words to write Don Quixote, and the Bible is 783,000 words. 580,000 words typed by a partially sighted man with maybe 30 years to live. Suddenly, life is beautiful. Gordon Brown’s absenteeism is a clear cut case: it’s simply not on. If Brown is ill or can’t be bothered he should resign

Saturday

Peter Stormonth-Darling

An ideal banker

At last, thirty years after his death, we have a proper biography of the enigmatic but inspirational banker Siegmund Warburg, extensively researched and beautifully written. Previous efforts fell short. A Man of Influence (1988), written by Jacques Attali, workaholic aide to President Mitterrand, showed a careless disregard for accuracy. The Warburgs (1993) by Ron Chernow contained a great deal of interesting information, including for the first time a public account of Warburg’s affair with the Russian prima ballerina, Danilova, but left the impression, in the words of his astute long-time partner, troubleshooter and friend Henry Grunfeld, that Siegmund Warburg was not a man you would want to meet. David Kynaston,

Michael Henderson

The sound of eternity

The Ninth is not necessarily Beethoven’s greatest symphony. The Ninth is not necessarily Beethoven’s greatest symphony. That honour is surely shared by the Eroica, in which the composer changed the course of orchestral writing after two prentice works (and what works they were!), and the Seventh. Beethoven’s last symphony, known in the English-speaking world as the ‘Choral’, for its unprecedented use of the human voice, is magnificent but flawed. The meditative slow movement may be the greatest Beethoven ever wrote, but the joy that Beethoven strove for in the finale finds finer musical and dramatic expression in the hymn to liberty that closes Fidelio. If it is not his greatest

Pj Kavanagh

A man after his time

Denys Watkins-Pitchford (1905-1990) illustrated dozens of books under his double-barrel and wrote at least 60 of his own under the two initials ‘BB’. Denys Watkins-Pitchford (1905-1990) illustrated dozens of books under his double-barrel and wrote at least 60 of his own under the two initials ‘BB’. This Symposium is a demonstration of how his writing has touched many, varied lives. The son of a vicar, he put his own faith in ‘nature’. Subsidised by his own writing, he followed what is called here ‘the manly pusuits’ — fishing, wildfowling — though why a man exalted to near ecstasy by the beauty of a skein of geese rising from marshes in

Matthew Dennison

More than a painter of Queens

The last words of Hungarian-born portraitist Philip de László, spoken to his nurse, were apparently, ‘It is a pity, because there is so much still to do.’ As Duff Hart-Davis’s biography amply demonstrates, for de László, art — which he regarded as ‘work’ as much as an aesthetic vocation — was both the purpose and the substance of his life. The last words of Hungarian-born portraitist Philip de László, spoken to his nurse, were apparently, ‘It is a pity, because there is so much still to do.’ As Duff Hart-Davis’s biography amply demonstrates, for de László, art — which he regarded as ‘work’ as much as an aesthetic vocation —