It is tempting to conclude that a subject is fished out when strange titles appear, presumably with the intention of suggesting something novel. This is Dot Wordsworth’s territory, but can there really be such a thing as ‘the biography of a battle’? Last year, Macmillan published David Cordingly’s excellent history of HMS Bellerophon — Billy
By the Grand Canal takes place, not wholly unexpectedly, in the Venice of the immediately post-Great War era. To this idyllic if decaying refuge comes dapper Sir Hugh Thurne, a fortysomething career diplomat, bruised by the turmoil of the past four years (in particular the death of his fast friend Philip Mancroft) but keen to
On the 150th anniversary of the first deed for which a Victoria Cross was awarded, this admirable book recounts some of the tales of those who have won it. The earliest, a young naval officer called Charles Lucas, ran forward instead of taking cover when a bomb landed, sizzling, on the deck of HMS Hecla
What on earth is a ‘high concept novel’? For the expression to have any meaning you’d have to have a low concept novel, a medium concept novel and even a no concept novel. How high? Compared to? It doesn’t make sense. Nonetheless this is one. (In fairness to Fay Weldon she does not say so;
In the days when the Cold War provided depth and context to all spy fiction, Charles McCarry was the strongest of the contenders for the title of ‘the American John Le Carré’. Although Robert Littell and Paul Hennisart wrote novels of complex moral ambiguity, McCarry’s CIA was closer in tone to Smiley’s Circus, chosen from
Reading Maharanis has something of the poignant pleasure of rummaging in the attic of a great house fallen into desuetude: here are reminders of another age. Princesses stroll in their gardens in the Indian moonlight, fireflies flickering like stars, or roller-skate gaily through their marble palaces, saris billowing, with a staff of 400 to keep
I have read somewhere that the friends of this author are worried. Apparently he is an MP, a shadow minister, a performer on chat shows, editor of a weekly magazine, the next prime minister but three — and now out pops a novel. How can he manage it all? They need not worry. On the
He is most like a poet when writing least like one. Skim the titles of P. J. Kavanagh’s new collection and you’ll find the clues. ‘November’, ‘London Bridge’ and ‘Christmas walk’ are admirable instances of a skilled craftsman plying his trade, but they lack the yeasty suddenness of the real thing. Head instead for ‘What
When Robert Goizueta, Coca-Cola’s boss, attempted to justify his $80 million annual income to a meeting of shareholders he was interrupted four times — with applause. Attitudes to wealth and opportunity, as to so much else in the United States, are far removed from the prevailing mood in Britain and Europe. During the Cold War,
This far from flimsy novel has been written and published with remarkable speed. Little more than a year ago, on 5 September 2003, the American illusionist David Blaine entered his Perspex box beside the Thames, eventually to emerge after 44 days of starvation. His feat of heroism, madness or self-punishment (interpret it as you will)
There is a fading misconception in Europe that every white person in South Africa lives the life of Reilly, albeit behind a barbed-wire perimeter fence. The fact is that, apart from all the hardworking white postmen and store clerks, genuine white trash abounds, booted out of one too many doors by bosses and wives and
Andrew Marr is a great adornment to his — our — trade. He is terribly clever and well-read, and I am sure he could have done something serious and useful with his life. But he decided early on that journalism was the thing for him. Despite his first-class degree in English at Cambridge, it quickly
Tom Hodgkinson is a 21st-century Luddite. He wishes we could smash the principles of capitalist consumerism that enslave most of the population so they can service their debts. In this beguiling book, he persuasively advocates idleness as the way to gain access to the creativity of the subconscious mind, or at least to enjoy a
Matt Thorne’s new novel might have been more usefully subtitled ‘A Suspension of Disbelief’. A novel called Cherry about sexual desire and manipulation, about a real (or possibly imaginary and perhaps, at best, invented) woman called Cherry, and with a cherry on the jacket. A cherry surrounded by splashes of …what? Blood, ink, barbecue sauce?
‘Every true writer becomes a writer because of a profound trauma experienced in youth or childhood,’ wrote Amos Oz in The Silence of Heaven, his study of the work of the Israeli Nobel-prize winner Shmuel Yosef Agnon. With reservations, he added, ‘We might venture to say that the flight of the narrator’s imagination is as
A century ago, Paradise might have appeared in the stout bindings of the Religious Tract Society and been distributed to the deserving young in the form of Sunday school prizes. Or perhaps not, given that it begins in the dining-room of an alien hotel where its heroine, all memory of her previous life temporarily erased,
When Silvio Berlusconi came to power for the second time in May 2001, in a landslide victory, Italy became unique among Western democracies: no other nation had at its head its richest citizen — the 35th richest man in the world — someone who also enjoyed a monopoly of the country’s private television broadcasting. More
I have a faded photograph of Frances Osborne. I imagine the moment the picture was taken: perhaps she had just been told that this, her first book, would be published. She must have been happy and would have shared her happiness with her children, Luke and Liberty, who, I suppose, must have been happy, too.
Finishing The Rotters’ Club and finding ‘there will be a sequel’ posted at the back was a bit of good news. As was finding that sequel on my doormat. And here’s more good news: The Closed Circle is terrific. Last seen on election night in 1979, the characters from The Rotters’ Club are now pushing
Alexis Soyer was Britain’s first celebrity chef, and the catalogue of his achievements dwarfs that of Delia or Jamie. He made his name providing banquets for the richest Victorians, including Prince Albert and half the Cabinet, yet he also designed a soup kitchen for victims of the Irish famine, which fed 8,750 people daily in