Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Saturday

Brian Masters

Cash for cachet

Them and Us: The American Invasion of British High Society by Charles Jennings A dinner-party hosted by Chips Channon at his ostentatious Belgrave Square flat in 1936 frames this book. It is described in the introduction and appears again in the final chapter, for its composition defines what had gradually happened to high society in the previous 50 years. His guest of honour was Edward VIII, but those invited to dine with the King-Emperor proclaimed what the author calls ‘the triumph of the outsiders’: apart from the King’s brother and sister-in-law, George and Marina of Kent, they included a rich baronet, a couple of minor parliamentary figures, the squeaky, self-important

Tuesday

Alex Massie Alex Massie

We’ll have all the Tunes of Glory…

It all depends where you are coming from I suppose. Tyler Cowen flags up this Observer survey of forgotten, under-rated or generally neglected novels. And we’re immediately in an odd, odd place. Will Self selects Alasdair Gray’s Lanark. Well, you can call Lanark many things but given that Anthony Burgess (albeit absurdly) said it was the best novel to come out of Scotland since Sir Walter Scott was in his pomp, under-rated hardly seems to be the most apt description. That’s not the only odd Caledonian contribution however. Iain Rankin nominates James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Rankin claims only writers read it, yet –

Saturday

Oliver Rackham

Long live the weeds and the wilderness

The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane Robert Macfarlane is a Cambridge don, Fellow in English at Emmanuel College, with an artistic eye for wild and lonely places. He was a friend and follower of Roger Deakin, whose last book I reveiwed three weeks ago. Deakin swam in strange waters; Macfarlane sleeps — or spends the night — in unlikely places, such as tentless on the top of Ben Hope, northernmost high mountain in Britain, in a northerly hailstorm in winter. Both of them attempt the heroic task of conveying the genius loci of wild landscapes in words, with little help from pictures or maps. Dr Macfarlane takes the reader to

Jonathan Mirsky

You have been warned

The Confidence Man: His Masquerade by Herman Melville Many years ago in Texas, a movie advertisement urged viewers ‘to thrill to Herman Melville’s immortal story of the sea, Moby-Dick, with Gregory Peck in the title role,’ prompting the New Yorker to comment, ‘A whale of a part.’ And how! I’ve just finished reading the book again. It was my fifth read and the first time I’ve read every word. When I was a boy I read the whaling chapters and skipped everything else. Later I advanced through the hero Ishmael’s relationships with the harpooner Queequeg, Captain Ahab and the first mate, Starbuck. Then came the sorts, parts and habits of

Allan Massie

Likely lads in their day

Simon Raven’s first novel, The Feathers of Death, was published in 1959 Simon Raven’s first novel, The Feathers of Death, was published in 1959 when I was in my second year at Cambridge. We fell on it with glee, as I remarked, a few weeks after Raven’s death, to a fellow-novelist, somewhat to her amazement. ‘I’ve never read any of his books,’ she said. ‘I think my husband has.’ Not so surprising perhaps. I doubt if he ever had many devoted female readers. What attracted us to the novel was not so much its for the time decidedly daring story — army officer’s affair with blond, blue-eyed drummer Malcolm Harley

Wednesday

Paul Johnson

Whoever expected writers to be other than difficult people?

As someone who has spent nearly 60 years as a professional writer, I am inevitably set in my ways, though capable of changing them radically in a crisis. But I recognise that my ways are not typical, that there is no such thing as a typical writer. Starting early is for me axiomatic (it is 6.45 a.m. as I write these words). It was for Trollope too, who paid his groom an extra sum annually for bringing him a scalding cup of coffee as dawn was breaking. And I, like Trollope, start writing immediately. By contrast, J.B. Priestley told me that he needed anything up to an hour fiddling with

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Waking up late at the Palace

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett Since The History Boys transferred first to Broadway and then to the cinema, Alan Bennett has made the journey from national treasure to international superstar. The dustwrapper of this droll novella spends two lines on the London gongs that play picked up, and more than five lines on the American awards (‘five New York Drama Desk Awards, four Outer Critics’ Circle Awards . . . six Tonys including Best Play’), festooned with which he returned to his native Yorkshire. The catalogue of glory reaches a final climax: ‘He was named Reader’s Digest Author of the Year 2005.’ I imagine that would have made Bennett

David Caute

Movies and talkies

Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Reader edited by David Parkinson Arriving at Oxford in 1923, the young Graham Greene made one move he was to regret 30 years later, when applying for a US entry visa — he joined the Communist party for a few weeks. Much less regrettable, he appointed himself the film critic of Oxford Outlook (editor G. Greene). This of course was the heyday of the silent movie and the undergraduate Greene could be found bent over the latest piece on montage by Pudovkin or Eisenstein in the magazine Close-Up. He later recalled his horror at the arrival of ‘talkies’ — it seemed like the

Ben Wilson

The politics of the plot

The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden by Tim Richardson The man ‘of Polite Imagination’, according to Joseph Addison, was able to delight in things lesser mortals might fail to appreciate, particularly the landscape. ‘It gives him indeed a kind of Property in everything he sees, and makes the most rude uncultivated Parts of Nature administer to his pleasure.’ If an Englishman’s home used to be his castle — the basis of his liberty — his garden was a blank canvas on which to express his originality and freedom. This book ends with the arrival of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown in the 1740s, and Tim Richardson regards his work as

Saturday

Juliet Townsend

Back to St Trinians

The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls by Rosemary Davidson and Sarah Vine One of the publishing triumphs of last year, The Dangerous Book for Boys, with immaculate timing tapped into a rich vein that combined nostalgia with exasperation at the seemingly unstoppable advance of Nanny State, with her stifling regime of risk assessment and avoidance. It followed a long line of similar books stretching back over 200 years. In fact its objectives were identical to those of the authors of The Boy’s Own Book of Sports and Pastimes (c. 1840), which was an attempt to enable those who had the guardianship of youth to present their young protégés, in

Matthew Dennison

Boy of the streets

Hotel de Dream by Edmund White Seven years before his untimely death from consumption at the age of 28, Stephen Crane published Maggie: A Girl of the Streets. It was 1893 and the time was out of joint for a grimly realistic fictionalisation of the life of a prostitute. Nineteenth-century sensibilities recoiled. Crane enjoyed a succès de scandale, and established himself at the forefront of American literary modernism. Fellow American author Edmund White — himself no stranger to the succès de scandale — has chosen Stephen Crane as the subject of his new novel. Crane is a cultish writer, largely unknown to British readers. In White’s hands, depicted at the

Simon Baker

Two can be as bad as one

Secrets of the Sea by Nicholas Shakespeare Nicholas Shakespeare’s new novel is set in Wellington Point, an inauspicious fictional Tasmanian town. It is a place offering few prospects: the only jobs are menial, and the only person with any vim is the odious Ray Grogan, an estate agent who seduces local women by comparing them to the Taj Mahal by moonlight. People who move to Wellington Point do so, more often than not, for a quiet life. One such person is Alex Dove. Alex’s English parents arrived, full of hope, in Wellington Point before Alex was born, but his father became inward and alcoholic, interested only in building ships in

Roy Kerridge

Taking the life out of the Lane

On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein Brick Lane, a long and ancient street in London’s East End, casts a spell of fascination on all who go there. To walk down Brick Lane is to take a voyage through the past, where Huguenot weavers of the 18th century meet fellow ghosts of Jewish anarchists, and their history is everywhere you look. My own family history touches lightly on the Lane, for my grandfather owned a workshop there in the 1920s, and my stepfather discovered an anarchist printing press hidden in a ruined house there in the 1950s. Whitechapel Library, next door to the Art Gallery, is not strictly speaking in the

Jeremy Treglown

Sticking close to his desk . . .

The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad by John Stape Why did he do it? In his late thirties, Joseph Conrad abandoned the modestly successful career as a seaman which he had steadily built up. Though the job involved tiresome exams and increasing responsibilities, it had been his ‘great passion’, he wrote a dozen years later. ‘I call it great because it was great to me. Others may call it a foolish infatuation. Those words have been applied to every love story. But whatever it may be the fact remains that it was something too great for words.’ Yet he gave it up, opting instead for writing, marriage and a family,

Ian Garrick-Mason

Two pairs of unsafe hands

Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek For a man who once promised the press, way back in 1962, that ‘you won’t have Nixon to kick around any more’, Richard Nixon has turned out to have a remarkably long political afterlife. After a five-and-a- half year presidency, he spent the two decades after his resignation in 1974 patiently building, through books and foreign visits, his reputation as a wise elder statesman. Even now, 13 years on from his death, we have no lack of Nixonalia to choose from: a weighty new biography by Conrad Black, a hit play by Peter Morgan (The Queen) about the famous 1977 David

Friday

The Spectator

On the road with Sarkozy

For any politician to allow someone full access to them so that they can write an ‘on the campaign trail with’ book is always a risk. It says something about Nicolas Sarkozy’s confidence then, that when the French playwright Yasmina Reza suggested doing this Sarkozy accepted without hesitation. Reza’s account is sympathetic to Sarkozy but also details his impatience and arrogance. The book also reveals that Sarkozy’s wife was never with him during the election campaign. Inevitably, Reza was asked by the press if Sarkozy had tried to seduce her. Her answer to the question was wonderfully French, as the IHT reports: “No, he wanted to seduce France.” Then, she added a

The Spectator

The East End Way

I spent part of this morning on a delightful walk down Brick Lane in east London with the artist and historian Rachel Lichtenstein, recording a piece for the Today programme next week. Rachel, who is a match for anyone in the field of psycho-geography, has a new book out entitled On Brick Lane, which is a majestic oral history of the area, and the first of three planned books on London streets, the next of which will explore Hatton Garden. Rachel’s specific thesis is that social change and middle class entryism has brought to an end a deeply-rooted tradition in this part of the capital city, a tradition that must

Monday

The Spectator

Whose memoirs would you most like to read?

Michael White has a fun post up on which political memoirs really were worth the advances that their publishers paid for them. Which raises the question of which politician’s autobiography would you pay to read? Top of my list would be Peter Mandelson. He is the most psychologically interesting of the New Labour founding fathers. He’s also the one who is probably most aware of how close the project came to failing. Remember that, unlike Blair and Brown, he was shut out after Neil Kinnock’s 1992 defeat. Put alongside that, Northern Ireland where he appears to have seen the flaws in Blair’s approach more clearly than anyone else on the

Saturday

Allan Massie

From Shetland with truth

A novelist is rarely well-advised to write his masterpiece in his fifties, unless his position at the top of the tree is secure. His themes and style are no longer likely to be in fashion. A younger generation of writers is occupying the attention of reviewers and speaking with greater immediacy to the public. This was Eric Linklater’s experience. He had achieved popularity and critical respect in the Thirties with Juan in America and his best prewar novel Magnus Merriman, and maintained his position after the war with Private Angelo and Laxdale Hall. But by the mid-1950s, when he wrote The Dark of Summer, he was, if not in the

Patrick Skene-Catling

Homage to arms

Coward on the Beach by James Delingpole If you are not the right age to have enjoyed the thrills of serving in uniform in a really dangerous military campaign, the next best thing is to imagine one and write about it. That is what James Delingpole has done, very well indeed. His assiduous research, in the field, in the Imperial War Museum and elsewhere, his uncanny empathy with the officers and men of the 47th Royal Marine Commando, and his prose style, vigorous, witty and elegant, have produced a novel about the D-Day invasion of Normandy that’s a welcome corrective to the Spielberg–Hanks version and promises a lot more excitement