The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
‘To Oliver Cromwell’ Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud Not of war only, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless fortitude To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, And on the neck of crowned fortune proud Hast reared God’s trophies and his work pursued While Darwen streams with blood
If you thought that winter in Britain had gone on long enough this year, then spare a thought for the Norwegians. Winters in Norway are famously long, dark and bitter, and – for those who experience them year upon year – can be incredibly boring. During one such winter, in February 1923, two Norwegians called
The salubrious surroundings of the Waldorf Hotel seem like a very apt setting to interview a master of style and sophistication. When I arrive in the lobby, John Banville is nowhere to be seen. Peeping into the bar, I notice a grey haired man with a moustache, wearing a tuxedo, softly playing a grand piano.
Sometimes, in the joyous lotteries we call ‘secondhand bookshops’, you find a volume that takes you back to a different era because of its physical appearance. Sometimes you find one that adds to the effect by its content – a book about Victorian cricket, perhaps, or 1950s industrial policy. But sometimes you find one that
In last week’s Spectator, Sam Leith reviewed Eric Hobsawm’s Fractured Times. Our ex-political editor and drink critic Bruce Anderson thinks Leith has missed a basic point about Hobsbawm’s career. Here is Anderson’s riposte in full: In his review of Eric Hobsbawm’s ‘Fractured Times’ (Spectator, 23 March). Sam Leith misses the basic point: the basic treason. Throughout his career, Professor
The plot of The Quickening (Arrow/ Hammer, £9.99) by Julie Myerson (pictured) revolves around pregnant, newlywed Rachel and her sinister husband, Dan. Rachel’s ghostly journey begins when Dan suggests a holiday in Antigua. Even though Rachel has a creepy premonition when she sees a photograph of her Caribbean destination, she’s not deterred. Of course, strange
This ‘wry soliloquy’, as Ronald Blythe calls The Undelivered Mardle in his introduction, is quite unlike anything else, although its ostensible subject, the history of a small Suffolk farmyard church and its parish (accompanied by three excellent maps) might suggest otherwise. Asked to give a talk or ‘mardle’ to raise money for the priory church
The scene is chilling. Four men stand in the snow, all in uniform. The men are in pairs, one in each pair holds a pistol to the head of the man in front. Behind them two parked cars, 1940s models; in front a snow-filled ditch. What happens next? The right answer depends on which scene
Eventually, all of Sir Roy Strong’s voluminous personal archive is going — like Alan Bennett’s — to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Riffling through it, he realised there was something missing: he had not adequately covered the years between 1935, when he was born, and 1967, when he became director of the National Portrait Gallery
Technology may not have taken over the world, but it is making quite good progress in taking over our lives. Thirty years ago, receiving a phone call was the height of communication stimulus. Now, we are programmed to expect several emails an hour and can become anxious if we don’t receive them. It’s worse than
Lorna Gibb ends her book on Rebecca West by saying: ‘That she would be remembered because her work would go on being read was her greatest legacy.’ A more measured suggestion might be found in a sentence 20 pages earlier, from a 1973 TLS survey of her writing: ‘Dame Rebecca’s work has not fused in
Final proof – if any were needed – that Englishmen are not made of the same mettle as their rough, tough ancestors is provided on the website of the Towton Battlefield Society, who have cancelled their annual re-enactment of England’s bloodiest battle this Sunday ‘for safety’s sake…’ on the grounds that the battlefield has been
This post is the second half of a list of 21 books that a man might give to his godson on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday.That is novels done. The bespoke bookcase is more than half loaded; 12 slots are full, nine remain. I conceive the selection of other titles as a complement to
There is much to be said for godfathers. They offer the wisdom of maturity without the complications of direct filial ties. Likewise there is much to be said for 21st birthday celebrations, the last relic in our ossified, post-industrial society of the adulthood rituals of traditional peoples. However, it is the fusion of these two
In his new book, Who Owns The Future?, computer scientist, Jaron Lanier, argues that as technology has become more advanced, so too has our dependency on information tools. Lanier believes that if we continue on our present path, where we think of computers as passive tools, instead of machines that real people create, our myopia will
‘What is your idea about Iran?’ friendly Iranians are heard to ask the few foreign visitors who still come their way. One is never quite sure whether by ‘idea’ they mean ‘impression’, ‘opinion’ or ‘theory’. Inspiring landscapes, fine cuisine and a tradition of hospitality make the first category easy ground. The second pertains to politics,
I live in New York and until this month I had never heard of Victor Gregg, the World War II veteran whose 2011 memoir, Rifleman, was hailed as possibly the most honest and outspoken ever written by an enlisted soldier and ‘an outstanding book that deserves to become a classic’. Gregg is 93, which is
We don’t have an extreme climate, says Richard Mabey in Turned Out Nice Again (Profile, £8.99). We don’t have tsunamis, active volcanoes, monsoons or Saharan duststorms. ‘What we really suffer from is a whimsical climate, and that can be tougher to cope with than knowing for sure you’re going to be under three feet of
The sheer workload. That’s the first big surprise in Matthew Laban’s absorbing history of the Speakership since 1945. Typically, the Speaker rises at dawn and holds several hours of preparatory meetings before parliamentary business starts after lunch. Though helped by two deputies, the Speaker must remain on duty into the small hours. Loneliness and overwork
In the first six pages of Andrea Camilleri’s new novel, Inspector Montalbano drinks at least four cups of coffee and watches a seagull dance to its death in front of his verandah. Its beak pointing at the sky, the bird spins in its last agony. Afterwards, the inspector places its corpse in a plastic bag,
Do men or women of the world still exist? Well-educated, they are from families that value taste, manners and intellectual cultivation, and with enough money to allow their children to acquire these qualities; they attend concerts, look at paintings, travel and meet men and woman of distinction. They could, for example, while still young, watch
The so-called ‘Robben Island Bible’ is one of the holy relics of Shakespeare criticism. It is a copy of a 1970 edition of Shakespeare’s complete works, kept by a political prisoner on Robben Island, the notorious island jail off Cape Town, during the 1970s and 1980s. The possession of such a book was against the
The Emperor Augustus, ruler of the known world, once spotted a man in the street who looked a bit like himself. ‘Did your mother ever work at the palace?’ he asked him roguishly. ‘No,’ the man replied, ‘but my father did.’ Augustus could have had the man killed for this scurrilous (and slightly surreal) insinuation,
Like many posthumous books from distinguished thinkers, this isn’t one. A book, I mean. Not really. The problem is that nobody seems to buy cobbled-together collections of previously published essays, talks and book reviews. The thing to do if you’re a publisher, therefore, is to give it a title that makes it sound like a
It is Budget Day. Prepare for another barrage of “messages” about the virtues or perils, depending on your point of view, of ‘austerity’. From where has this ubiquitous term come? And should it apply to our times? Dot Wordsworth, our language columnist, has some answers: ‘If we are invited to think we are experiencing austerity,
Death Comes For The Poets is an unliterary book with a highly literary subject. It’s usually done the other way around: exquisite quodrilogies about American car salesmen; towering works about bored wives in French villages. Here we have a thriller, but one written by two eminent contemporary poets in which poets are murdered in correspondent
To my Excellent Lucasia , on our Friendship. I did not live until this time Crowned my felicity – When I could say without a crime I am not thine, but thee. This carcass breathed, and walked, and slept, So that the world believed There was a soul the motions kept; But they were all
Peter Lilley MP is the Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, and has been an MP since 1983. He was a Cabinet minister in both the Thatcher and Major governments, and today talks to us about Waugh, Tolstoy, and his quest for timeless literature. 1) Which book is on your bedside table at the moment?
This week, March 11th, marks the 50th anniversary of the shooting by firing squad near Paris of the last person (so far) to be executed by the state for political offences in France. 36-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry, a brilliant young officer of the French Air Force, was a rocket scientist (he invented the SS-10 anti-tank
