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The leading edge

Three out of the last ten prime ministers have been cricket fanatics. The first was Clement Attlee. In the immediate aftermath of the second world war a newswire service was installed in 10 Downing Street. Attlee ignored it except that during the summer months he used what he called his ‘cricket machine’ to keep up

Lloyd Evans

It will never be buried

Why a book at all? This guide to email etiquette, written by a pair of New York Times hacks, ought to exist as a viral attachment bouncing around the world from computer to computer. It kicks off with Jo Moore’s notorious and oft-misquoted email. Here’s the exact wording: ‘It is now a very good day

No Interruptions

I cannot wholly decideabout my father’s resolve not to speak or seek out textsor make arrangements except perhaps to the pillowand the blankets. Was it for him, or for us,or was he ‘in denial’ when he preferred to drift and dozeto music or ambient conversation as if some unusual actwould make the thing too real?

Tasty Woolf rissoles

When I was a child, an aunt gave my mother a cookery book called 100 Ways with Mince. This made a huge impression on me, because of my mother’s irritation — it was not her idea of a present — but even more so because of the enormity of the title. It sprang into my

Fighting naked on the beaches

Few have done more than Noble Frankland to dissipate the myths and propaganda that fog our understanding of modern warfare. After serving as a navigator in Bomber Command during the second world war, Frankland went on to become a historian in the Cabinet Office, Director of the Imperial War Museum and adviser to the Thames

Women of no importance

The Kite Runner, said to be the first Afghan novel to be written in English, told an epic tale of individuals whose lives were lived across two continents amidst relentless political upheaval. Its author, Khaled Hosseini, stunned the critics with the extraordinary quality of that debut novel which has sold over eight million copies and

A fickle jade

Strix would have been 100 on 31 May. Before he had decided on a screech owl as his nom de plume, he had been Moth, and occasionally Scadavay and Apemantus. He had joined The Spectator in 1931 as a bumptious young man with a first in English from Oxford, where he had also been editor

An unpromising land

The enjoyment you take in this novel will depend on what sort of animal you think the novel is. If you think novels are moral journeys, examinations of the troubles of the world, you will enjoy it as an ingenious example of the ‘alternate world’ fantasy. If you think they are principally aesthetic objects made

The voice of moderation

Abu Suleiman looks back on his time in al-Qaeda as a reformed drug addict in Britain might consider his past life as a junkie. Speaking English, learnt from his American jailers at Guantanamo Bay, the young Saudi is now a respectable member of society and has a wife and a job as a stock market

Fearless freedom fighter

Sara Paretsky is one of the most respected and influential crime novelists of today, and this poignant and compelling personal testimony explains both the influences which made her a writer and the kind of writer she became. She was born in 1947 in Ames, Iowa, and grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, the only daughter in

Deep, dark truths revealed

A few nights ago I was at a dinner party at which all those present knew each other far better than I knew them. For what seemed an interminable time their sole topic of conversation was the tempestuous relationship of a couple of whom I had never even heard. The story, in as far as

Uncomfortable home truths

In a large house in north London, thick with the fug of kosher cooking and unspoken secrets, lives a lopsided family. The Rubins are envied — and enviable, surely? Claudia Rubin is a rabbi. She is also a writer, media personality and, par excellence, mother. She dominates her gentle, disappointed biographer husband Nor- man and

A romantic looks back

The unending journey of this book takes Mark Tully from slums to skyscrapers as he explores the past, present and future not only of the subcontinent but of society, both eastern and western; how democracy is facing up to fundamentalism — Hindu, Muslim and an atheism he scathingly labels ‘aggressive secularism’. The Dawkins camp would

The wild one

You can hardly blame a woman of 102 for being a bit hazy when it comes to giving directions. ‘Drive to the Italian border,’ said Lesley Blanch on the telephone, after initially attempting to discourage my visit. ‘When you get there, make a U-turn and I’m the first on the right.’ And so she was,

Ordering the steps of the Dance . . .

Writing a novel is a voyage into unknown territory. (Reading one is also, of course.) The author explores possibilities. To some extent even those novels which seem far removed from autobiography represent the author’s imaginary, or alternative, life, characters owing more in the last resort to him than to any identifiable models. He is a

Untangling the web of deception

This is perhaps the most amazing non-fiction spy book that has ever appeared during or after the Cold War. There is little doubt that all intelligence historians interested in the past 50 years of espionage games played by the CIA and the KGB will read it as we did — in one take: A day

An affair to remember

New movie festivals spring up every year and pictures can achieve fame and reach large, if not especially lucrative, audiences by playing on the worldwide festival circuit without ever getting into normal commercial cinemas. But pace John Huston, who over half a century ago described Edinburgh as ‘the only film festival worth a damn’ (a

When friends fall out

Political biography is in the doldrums. No one wants to read 800 pages or so of cradle-to-grave dead politics, especially if it’s familiar stuff and has all been written about before. The detail is too much, and the potted narrative of forgotten political manoeuvring tends to overwhelm the life. One way out of this dilemma