Book Reviews

When I first read Naked Lunch, as a teenager sleeping rough in a Greek olive grove, I thought it funny, baffling and vile, its hallucinatory horrors recalling paintings by Francis Bacon — ‘mouth and eyes are one organ that leaps forward to snap with transparent teeth’. A diet of ouzo and dodgy mousaka played havoc with my bowels, and the pages before me were soon behind me, which I thought would please William Burroughs, whose humour was decidedly cloacal. It would also have pleased Edith Sitwell, whose review suggested that such was a fitting use for the book: ‘I do not wish to spend the rest of my life,’ she

Between 1945 and his death in 1961 Ernest Hemingway published only two books, apart from collections of stories mostly written before the war. The two were Across the River and Into the Trees and The Old Man and the Sea. The first was generally considered a failure, the second a success; and it’s doubtless perversity that makes me much prefer Across the River. The meagre tally might suggest he was burned out, but for most of the time he was working hard on various projects, and the difficulty was to finish books. This was partly because the economy of his early work had given way to loquaciousness, and he went

‘The second world war lasted for 2,174 days, cost $1.5 trillion and claimed the lives of over 50 million people. That represents 23,000 lives lost every day, or more than six people killed every minute, for six long years.’ This neat summary is characteristic of the way Andrew Roberts uses statistics to bring home to the reader the enormity, the waste and the horror of that terrible conflict. The book is long, but it is tightly written, every page packed with terse comment, well-organised facts and, often, telling details. It has a thesis: Hitler lost the war essentially because he was a Nazi, and allowed his race theories and ideological

‘No English monarch until Victoria — that is, long after monarchy had become the “dignified”, rather than the “efficient” part of the constitution — remained free from challenge, and three lost their thrones to rebellions.’ David Horspool’s new book is a detailed survey of the English men, women and mobs who have been prepared to risk life and property to rise up against power. It starts in the time of the Norman yoke and ends with the Poll Tax riots in the time of the Norman Tebbit. It is, to adapt Carlyle, a ‘history of irate men’. There’s an awful lot of ground to cover and Horspool goes over it

Mrs Noyce kept on being prosecuted, appearing immaculately clad on her many court appearances. But she carried on, keeping her thoughts to herself. She probably echoed the complaint of another madam, Margaret Sempill, in the 19th Century: when she was accused by the Kirk of keeping prostitutes — in particular the very pretty Katherine Lenton, who slept with the French Amabassador — she commented: ‘I get the name, but others the profit.’ She was whipped for her cheek. The French Ambassador was not troubled. Over recent years, Fry’s series of Scottish histories have built a splendid track record of overturning cherished myths. Edinburgh’s fabled respectability is just one of them.

Parlour game time! The Literary Canon is an intimidating thing at the best of times but these days it’s becoming grotesquely bloated. It could do with losing some weight. So, in that spirit, it’s time to think of what books could safely be ditched without causing too much pain or guilt.  The Second Pass starts the game by choosing ten books that (they think) your life might be improved by ignoring: White Noise by Don DeLillo Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez The Road by Cormac McCarthy The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence On the Road by Jack Kerouac The Corrections by

This is a glorious book with one crippling flaw. Let’s put the ecstasy before the agony. Faber and Faber, founded in 1929, commissioned some of the best book jackets of all time; Private Eye, retracting its claws for once, called the firm Fabber and Fabber — of course that applied to the authors as well as the designs. A few of the designs seem dated in a bad sense, but most of them are joyfully, exhilaratingly redolent of their time — especially the art deco and ‘Contemp’ry’ ones. They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover — an update on ‘Fine feathers don’t make fine birds’ — but