The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
I have to register a strong complaint about the misleading and opportunistic title of this book; it is not about ‘the Great Game’ as the phrase is usually understood. Various interesting and valuable attempts, such as the studies by Peter Hopkirk, have made the case that the British/Russian rivalry for control over Central Asia not
Assuming that a biography is worth writing in the first place, it is often asserted that after 20 years or so another look at the same subject is justified. It is nearly 20 years now since Selina Hastings’s subtle and perceptive account of Nancy Mitford appeared; and so even if the heart sank at the
This handsome book should be given to all those non-Waltonians who say, ‘I don’t fish because I haven’t got the patience’, because it shows that fishing is ultimately about contemplation. Winslow Homer: Artist and Angler is an exhibition catalogue for the show which was recently at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and soon
Regrettably history is not among the core subjects now prescribed by the government’s umpteenth overhaul of the national curriculum. The omission is a foolish one, given the nation’s unquenchable enthusiasm for the past in whatever form, serious or ‘lite’. Does the official mind scent potential troublemakers among those inquisitive as to the fate of vanished
‘Truth of fact and truth of fiction are incompatible,’ Virginia Woolf once wrote. She was deploring the decision of her friend, Lytton Strachey, to combine fact and fiction in his book, Elizabeth and Essex, in which, in order to fill in the gaps in the historical record, Strachey used his imagination to invent details of
One might assume that the Oxford novel, like some long-delayed train finally pulling into Paddington, has run its course. Bright young things flee back into their stately towers as tourists prowl the streets in search of Sebastian Flyte and his chums. But today’s Oxford student is just as likely to be commuting from London in
The first four pages of this novel arouse the highest expectations. Some walkers in the Snowdon area stare up at the boilerplate slabs of a crag up which, far above them, a figure is climbing. He is neither carrying the special equipment nor wearing the protective gear usual for a project so dangerous, and he
When an honest citizen was shown into King James I’s room in Whitehall, the scene of confusion amid which he found the King was no bad picture of the state and quality of James’s own mind. Walter Scott, in The Fortunes of Nigel, tells the story and he explains how valuable ornaments were arranged in
Short stories are best read one a night just before you go to sleep, and this collection by Angela Huth, which brings together work from the last 30 years, would keep you going for nearly a month.
‘She was like a bride, they said, festooned in ribbons and bows, a large crucifix resting on her bosom,’ records Si
Already a bestseller in the many countries where it has been published, I’m Not Scared was described to me as a modern version of The Go-Between. After struggling through the wooden introduction to a group of children cycling up a hill somewhere in the south of Italy, I was steeling myself for one of those
‘Reviewers,’ laments the Dr Cake of Andrew Motion’s title, ‘they are devils. Devils. I have seen good men, good authors, broken by their deprecations. The worst of it is their presumption in supposing that those they chastise do not know their own faults, and admonish themselves with a ferocity others can only imagine.’ From a
In 1066 and All That there is a spoof exam question: ‘How can you be so numb and vague about Arbella Stuart?’ All the same, her name means little today. If she is known at all, it is as one of those fiendishly muddling and worryingly inbred claimants to the Tudor succession who all seem
‘Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity,’ remarks Augusten (pronounced You-gusten, by the way) Burroughs as he creeps towards the end of what must be one of the strangest and most engrossingly repellent memoirs of dysfunctional American family life ever to be
When you are a bestselling novelist you get to do things your way. So this isn’t 32 Songs, which would at least be a power of two, or even 30 Songs, but the defiantly prime 31 Songs, because that, says Nick Hornby, is how long the book needs to be. But then the millions of
During the war against Hitler, secret services recruited on the old boy net: there was no other way of being sure that recruits were not duds, and even on the old boy net bad mistakes could be made – Philby and Maclean were only the most notable examples. All that was supposed to vanish with
Shena Mackay has had a difficult and unconventional career, and it has taken a long time for most readers to register what a powerful and original novelist she is. Several things have counted, unfairly, against her; her subjects are not just domestic, but often suburban, which she presents with a disconcerting rapture. She does not
‘The Age of Russia,’ according to the doom-fraught speculations Oswald Spengler published in 1918, would succeed ‘the Decline of the West’. For a while, it looked as if he was right. Russia’s non-western credentials became part of the rhetoric of Soviet foreign policy. Hailed as ‘the future which works’, Russia was earnestly copied by escapers
If you happen to be one of those maddeningly quick-witted or sideways-thinking readers who can spot at a glance that ‘potty train (4)’ means LOCO, that ‘Where reluctant Scotsman lives (7)’ is LOTHIAN, or even – a lovely one, this – that ‘Amundson’s forwarding address (4)’ is MUSH, the pages of Sandy Balfour’s memoir will
Sebald is perturbed by the almost complete failure of German writers to describe the devastation of their country by British and American bombers during the second world war. Here, one might have thought, was an inescapable subject, a reality which confronted anyone who was in Germany during or after the war. About 600,000 civilians were
THE SHADOWS OF ELISA LYNCHby Si
Woodruff, you have not come to Oxford to take examinations, you have come to learn. The whole purpose of Oxford is learning. Buoyed up by the instant success of the first volume of his autobiography, William Woodruff and his English publishers have understandably decided to cash in on the Nab End brand in this, the
This is the time of year for armchair gardening. The cold, dark days give one the chance to ignore the muddy plot outside and to sit by the fire with a heap of catalogues. As one reads the thrilling descriptions, next summer’s garden comes to life in the mind’s eye. There are no rabbits, mice,
Judging by her own ideals of beauty and drama, Diana Dalziel’s arrival in the world must have been a bit of a let-down. That her Scottish father’s lineage merely went back to 834, or that her mother was part of the narrow 1890s New York society, was not half as picturesque as she’d have liked.
Richard Dawkins loves fighting. More precisely, he loves winning. To be Dawkinsed, as this selection from his essays of the past 25 years makes painfully clear, is not just to be dressed down or duffed up: it is to be squelched, pulverised, annihilated, rendered into suitably primordial paste. Those who incur this treatment have one
Barbara Hepworth died in a fire in her St Ives home in 1975 and, although her reputation has not diminished since then, it has hardly risen. Rather, perhaps, it has spread, at least among visitors to her studio and garden in St Ives, where she lived the last 26 years of her life, or to
The country-and-western singer Kinky Friedman has a song called ‘They Ain’t Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore’. ‘They don’t turn the other cheek the way they done before,’ sings Kinky. Had he met The Right Reverend Hugh Montefiore, the former Bishop of Birmingham, Kinky might have changed his tune. ‘It happened out of the blue.’ Montefiore,
Cocoa beans were ‘found’ by Europeans on Columbus’s fourth, final and failed voyage (1502). The beans were sufficiently rare to be used as currency and the beverage made from them was called ‘Food of the Gods’ and only served to Amerindian grandees like Montezuma – in his case, in gold cups. The liquid was laced,
Julia Margaret Cameron is hip. This would not have astonished her – she had every confidence in her vision as a photographer – but for many decades she has been regarded merely as the female face of the male act, someone who created pretty-pretty photographs of allegorical or religious scenes, with the odd Great Man