It was a certain unforgettable ex-girlfriend, Harry Mount confesses — named only as ‘S’ in his dedication — who came up with the idea for this new book, which he has therefore written to honour her, or in the hope of winning her back, or possibly, in some obscure way, to annoy her. Whichever it
It seems odd that a singer, musician, television performer and sculptor who typified the 1960s as vividly as Rory McEwen should now be known principally for his botanical paintings. From the early 1950s until his tragically early death in 1982 he was everywhere and knew everyone, but as The Colours of Reality shows, McEwen was
None of the teachers who taught us were around that final afternoon at Grammar school — probably frightened of being assaulted after giving us so much grief for five years, no more of that though. We sat around unsupervised, playing cards and smoking a bit and then it seemed so simple, so absurdly easy to
First, a quote from the novel under review. The context: it is a flashback scene of the behaviour of a character at a birthday celebration for her aged mother. She is confessing her bulimia to a crowded room: ‘I make myself sick! I vomit! I vomit! I vomit! I lock myself in the lavatory while
Gordon Corera, best known as the security correspondent for BBC News, somehow finds time to write authoritative, well-researched and readable books on intelligence. Here he explores the evolution of computers from what used to be called signals intelligence to their transforming role in today’s intelligence world. The result is an informative, balanced and revealing survey
Is it possible to tell a good poem from a bad one? To put the question another way: are there objective, even scientific, standards for evaluating literature? Helen Vendler has no doubts. Her spiky new collection of essays begins with the insistence that it is possible to prove how one poem is ‘superior’ to another,
At last, a snappy pop philosophy book which offers to sort out absolutely none of your personal issues. If anything, it will make them worse. ‘There are,’ Francis O’Gorman admits, ‘serious problems for me with the ethics of writing on worry.’ Since words are the very stuff of worry, O’Gorman (himself a worrier) suspects that
In 1929, when Edwin Lutyens handed over the newly completed building site of New Delhi to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin, many believed he had created a capital for a British empire in India that would last if not 1,000, then at least 100 years. It was, as Lord Stamfordham wrote, ‘a symbol of the might and permanence
‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded in the annals of politics. The Cardinal Archbishop of Cardiff (‘splendidly robed and well supported by priests and other attendants’) had come to lobby him (then an education minister) against the closure of a Catholic
When I didn’t recognise the number and saw the text with kisses, but no name — ‘Thinking of you: they’re playing Native New Yorker’, I racked my brain and was filled with shame. Was this the divorced father and one-night stand, or was this someone who had heard me sing in hospital when I was
