The theme of Henry James’s The Aspern Papers is well known: an unscrupulous biographer seeks the unpublished papers of his subject, a long-dead poet, through the cultivation of the poet’s former mistress, a forgotten old lady living with her spinster niece in Venice. He insinuates himself into the household, leading the niece to hope for
THE WEST AND THE RESTby Roger ScrutonContinuum, £12.99, pp. 196, ISBN 0826464963 Two reincarnations of the Old Oligarch – alike in deploring The Way We Live Now, different in emphasis and style – jostle for the moral high ground. Gore Vidal’s diagnosis of global schism centres on the US and its (mal)administration. Like a liberal,
Byron Rogers for years wrote the ‘Village Voice’ column in the Daily Telegraph, and this collection of articles on his life over the past 22 years in an English village is published because of the continued weekly requests of his readers. Blakesley is not a picture-book village. Rogers found ‘a lost triangle of land where
MAN OF THE CENTURY: WINSTON CHURCHILL AND HIS LEGENDby John Ramsden HarperCollins, £25, pp. 652, ISBN 002570343 In January 1965 John Lukacs came from France with his son to attend Churchill’s state funeral. He came, he writes in the contemporary account of his visit, reprinted in this book, in order to say ‘farewell to the
One might think that Henry Kamen, having written books on Spain in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, on the Inquisition, on Philip II and on the War of the Spanish Succession, had just about done, not to say saturated, the period. But no – he has apparently not covered the Spanish empire to his
The first story in this very fine collection takes the most risks, not unlike its protagonist. Ariel, a sophisticated, self-aware, American wife pays for two high-class prostitutes to entertain her wealthy Italian husband: ‘It’s a birthday present,’ she explains over the phone, trying hard to picture the girl on the other end of the line
Gardening is the nation’s hobby. It is worth around £3 billion in annual business, much of it generated by television makeovers. No one is letting on that what keeps us spending is the pursuit of a dream. Makeovers are showbiz, brilliant marketing tools, but Eldorado will never be found at B & Q or the
In the first two volumes accompanying his History of Britain television series, Simon Schama had a clear framework in which to work. Essentially he told of the dynastic struggles of kings, queens and pretenders, adding a little bit of plague here and a touch of religious fervour there as and when it became necessary to
Michael Dobbs is a charming, intelligent and self-effacing man, but you would not have guessed it from the blurb on the dust-jacket of his latest political thriller. ‘Michael Dobbs always makes an impact,’ it tells us. He has worked with prime ministers, written about kings, and always seems to be in the right spot at
FAUNA BRITANNICAby Duff Hart-DavisWeidenfeld, £30, pp. 415, ISBN 0297825321 Time was that this sort of confusion did not occur. In the days when ‘publishing was a business for gentlemen’, the aforesaid gents would meet for luncheon (‘Your Club or mine?’); they would agree that they would not each publish a book with the same title
‘If Charles Darwin had spent the first half of his life in the world of Jane Austen, he now stepped forward into the pages of Anthony Trollope.’ Thus Janet Browne begins what must at times have seemed an almost impossible task: how to write an interesting book about the second half of Darwin’s life. When
Anthony Lane has been film critic for the New Yorker since 1993, and the light lash of his humour is waspish and urbane in its New Yorker-ese. Nobody’s Perfect, a collection of his film and literary criticism, including author profiles and essays, is a glory. Throughout, Lane upholds the sterling virtue of good writing combined
I once met a thoroughly heterosexual old naval officer who had been a midshipman on the ship that sailed to Gallipoli with Rupert Brooke on board, the voyage during which Brooke died. I asked him what Brooke had been like. He said at once, ‘He was a god. Extraordinary beauty, law to himself. Like Lord
Long long ago, they used to say that the difference between the Hohenzollerns and the Habsburgs was this. In Berlin, the situation was always serious, but not hopeless. In Vienna, on the other hand, the situation was invariably hopeless, but not serious. It should never be forgotten that Billy Wilder, that most adorable of film
You may never have heard of David Gentleman, because, unlike so many of the over-publicised charlatans who call themselves artists nowadays, he does not believe in personality cults. He is as modest as he is talented, which is saying something. But, even if you do not know his name, you will almost certainly have licked
Forty years ago V. S. Naipaul enraged Indians by describing India as ‘an area of darkness’. He also upset a great many Western liberals who were then discovering in India a land of all-pervading spirituality. Later, he returned to India to write more kindly about ‘a wounded civilisation’ undergoing a liberation of spirit through ‘rage
Books as glossy as this are seldom as good as this. It is a sort of economic miracle in itself: fat, quarto-size, packed with illustrations, maps and plans, wide-margined, legibly typeset, efficiently proof-read, Hong Kong printed and priced under £25 hardback. It would almost be worth buying if it were a politician’s memoirs or a
Finland declared independence from Russia in 1917 during the Bolshevik revolution. The subsequent civil war ended in victory by the White forces under Marshal Baron Gustav Mannerheim, a former officer in the uniform of the Tsar, later to become commander-in-chief of the Finnish army in the Winter War of 1939/40. Mannerheim had been a chevalier
Rumpole is Falstaff on the right side of the law. He is rumbustious, shrewdly distrustful of authority and filled with substantial appetites others find gross. Leo McKern’s television incarnation was unforgettable; his face had been hardened by confronting the world’s absurdities and mangled by the rigorous pursuit of his own pleasure. One was reminded of
After his mountainous Gladstone and Churchill and barely less substantial study of the post-1886 chancellors of the exchequer, Roy Jenkins here enjoys himself in what by his standards is a mere jeu d’esprit. His new book is a collection of essays on 12 cities which he has lived in or often visited and which are