Listing page content here More than 60 years after its release, Citizen Kane still regularly appears on pretty much every critics’ list of the ‘Greatest Films of All Time’. If it is also regularly mentioned as one of the most overrated films of all time, that too is a testament to the power of its
Listing page content here These letters record a friendship that proceeded, unmarred, for 40 years. It began as a simple transaction; in 1938 Sylvia Townsend Warner, as a dare, submitted a short story to the New Yorker. Her editor was William Maxwell. They proved sympathetic to each other, so sympathetic, in fact, that 150 stories
Listing page content here Recent troubles in the Labour party were likened by more than one unsuccessful letter-writer to the Daily Telegraph to those of the army described by Petronius Arbiter nearly 2,000 years ago: We trained hard; but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganised.
Listing page content here If her name rings a bell at all, Mary Wesley, who died aged 90 in 2002, is remembered for two things: publishing the first of ten successful novels at the age of 70, and knowing a surprising amount, for a ladylike senior citizen, about sex. Even her greatest fans, though, might
Nothing much to report here, no news and no surprises: dog bites man; Philip Roth writes another masterpiece. What would be truly shocking at this stage in the late, great unfolding of Roth’s genius would be if he were to write a bad book, something as bad as The Breast, his last bad book, and
Out of the darkness and the bouillabaisseof nebulae and swirling gas we come,out of the toxic argon wilderness,seeking a sanctuary and a home. Be kind. Love one another. The frogs are dying. The old copper beechfesters in acid rain. The sky corrodes,contaminated birds are robbed of speechand, wrapped in fumes, Antarctica implodes.Be kind. Love one
Listing page content here The Bayeux tapestry records pictorially in a series of 56 panels, stretching for 70 metres, the last successful invasion of England. It reveals that the invasion of 1066 was a combined operation involving the building of 800 ships to transport an army of some 12,000 men and 2,000 horses across the
Listing page content here Since the Suez debacle, the chemistry between American presidents and British prime ministers has helped determine the ‘special relationship’s’ potency. Between Harold Macmillan and John F. Kennedy, as with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, it was dynamic. Between Edward Heath and Richard Nixon, John Major and Bill Clinton, it was inert.
Listing page content here On the face of it the actress Anna Massey’s life would seem to have been a charmed one. The child of distinguished theatrical parents — Raymond Massey, the powerful Canadian actor, and Adrienne Allen, the original Sybil in Private Lives — Miss Massey was steeped in the world of the stage
Listing page content here Brick Lane, Monica Ali’s first novel, sold a great many copies and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was also criticised by those guardians of the public conscience who write letters to newspapers on the grounds of cultural tourism. Despite her impeccable Bangladeshi origins, these detractors alleged, the Oxford-educated
‘Coming out’ had a different meaning in 1938 to what it has today. Nearly 70 years ago the London Season followed much the same pattern as it had before the first world war. For a small section of people there were three frantic months of entertainment. For 18-year-old girls and their young men friends there
Listing page content here Peter Carey’s ropy, visceral prose casts a powerful spell. It has a swarming, improvised quality which besieges and easily overwhelms objections, including any reluctance to credit his convoluted, sometimes outlandish plots. And yet those plots remain a problem. They somehow bring a hint of affectation and conceit to a sensibility, a
Sometimes at book festivals I am asked which historical novelists I most admire and enjoy. ‘Alfred Duggan,’ I say first, and am usually met with a blank response. This is not entirely surprising. Duggan died in 1964 and most of his books are out of print. Some will know of him as a friend of
Listing page content here Rather late, we have here the recollections of a then young German army staff officer, who saw Hitler almost daily for the last nine months of the second world war. As Guderian’s ADC, it was Freytag von Loringhoven’s duty to attend the daily Leader’s Conferences at which Hitler continued to direct
Listing page content here Charles Glass, an American reporter for many years based in Lebanon, in 1987 set off to portray what used to be called the Levant, starting in Iskenderun in what is now Turkey and ending in Aqaba in what is now Jordan. This project, which sought to tell the political story of
Listing page content here As a social and economic phase of English life the ‘Edwardian age’ had a longer span than the ten years of Edward VII’s reign. It began, roughly speaking, with Queen Victoria’s silver jubilee in 1887 and ended with the outbreak of the first world war in August 1914. Although a far
Listing page content here Only in the last few years have major memorials to the wartime sacrifices of the British Dominions and Colonies taken their place in the ceremonial plots of central London. They are a welcome if belated tribute. Yet, following the second world war’s end, the government made a more practical gesture. The
Listing page content here The Iraq war has shed a whole new light on the wars fought by the British during the reign of Queen Victoria. War was more or less continuous during the first half of Victoria’s reign, and very few of these imperial wars were actually provoked. The UN would not have approved
Listing page content here William Kent (1685-1748) was a Bridlington boy whose training as an artist in Italy was sponsored by squires from both sides of the River Humber including my kinsman Burrell Massingberd of Ormsby, Lincs. Kent’s correspondence with Massingberd is a significant source for any study of ‘the Signior’ and Timothy Mowl has
Listing page content here Our needs are really very mild,so please don’t be too critical,if we just crave a little seal,to decorate our winter coat.Don’t show those bloody, mashed- up cubs,it spoils our pleasure, gives us guiltto see the virgin snow stained red,and quite distressing for the kids.We love our s.u.v. so much,it’s big and