Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett Zugzwang, from the German Zug (move) and Zwang (obligation), is a term used in chess when the player whose turn it is to move has no move that does not worsen his position. It is not merely a bad position, but the state of being obliged to move when no move
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 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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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
Baseball Haiku: The Best Haiku Ever Written About The Game edited by Cor van den Heuvel and Nanae Tamura Every American schoolboy and schoolgirl knows the mock epic, ‘Casey at the Bat’ (which William Schuman made into an opera), and Franklin Adams’s ‘saddest of possible words,/Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance’ (of the Chicago Cubs’ double-play past masters). The historian,
No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July Short-story compilations are a tricky beast. For writers, publishers and readers alike they all too frequently prove unsatisfying. Those who’ve mastered the form draw their stories together in a tapestry of narrative voice, social milieu and location to create a cohesive whole from stand-alone parts.
Since the 1990s, a tartan tide has flooded the coasts of crime fiction, and it still shows no sign of ebbing in terms of either quality or quantity. Broken Skin (HarperCollins, £12.99) is Stuart MacBride’s third investigation set on the wilder shores of Aberdeen and featuring Detective Sergeant Logan McRae. The novel opens as Logan’s
George Kennan: A Study in Character by John Lukacs George Kennan died on 17 March 2005, aged 100 plus one year, one month and one day. The last half of his life he had spent in semi-retirement at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, but for a few years, between 1946 and 1952, he had