The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Colm Tóibín began his writing career as a journalist. Although he wrote his first novel, The South, in 1986, it took him a further four years to find a publisher. Since that seminal moment, Tóibín has delivered five other novels; two books of short stories; two plays, as well as several works of non-fiction. He
On 13th March 1938, judgment was passed in the political show trial of Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Soviet Politburo. He was sentenced to death. Bukharin was taken in silence from the dock to the exit to the cells. He paused at the door and cast his eyes up to the gallery that contained
What, if any, are the similarities between the great novels of past wars, such as Somerset Maugham’s The Hero (the Boer War), Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End (WWI), and Evelyn Waugh’s The Sword of Honor Trilogy (WWII)? And is there a connection between these wartime experiences and our current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan? As
Every time I do a ‘CTRL F’ search, allowing my computer to achieve in milliseconds what it took the schoolboy me hours to do (find a particular word among pages and pages of text), I think of a small business centre in Sheffield, and imagine its occupants to be shaking in fear at the onward
A new world flavour to Shelf Life this week, as the novelist Sean Thomas Russell joins us from Vancouver. He has been getting to grips with Shakespeare — an attempt, perhaps, to escape the pervasive influence of Bill O’Reilly. His latest novel, A Ship of War, is published in Britain next week. 1) What are
There’s a cracking story in the Bookseller this morning. The Publisher’s Association is calling on the government to cut VAT on eBooks to the zero rate enjoyed by print books. eBooks currently attract 20 per cent VAT, whereas print books are exempt on the grounds that they promote education. The Publishers’ Association complains that eBooks
Don’t be ashamed if you can’t understand the Budget. Economics is a notoriously tricky business. Even chancellors of the exchequer find themselves flailing about in the dark, dependent on the guidance of others. Winston Churchill explained his disastrous policy of returning sterling to the Gold Standard in 1925, by writing: ‘I had no special comprehension
Attention all those who commute through King’s Cross. A new bookshop has opened on the concourse near platforms 9-11, next to the shrine for Platform 9¾ of Harry Potter fame. This is the first Watermark store to open in Europe. Watermark is an Australian firm that specialises in filling small spaces in major travel hubs.
‘Zines and self-publishing are a bone of contention in my house. “I don’t have much time for self-publishing,” says my flatmate who works for Bloomsbury, “if it was any good it would have been published properly.” I, however, am in love with the idea that if anybody wanted to make a book or zine themselves,
Isn’t Paxo’s series on the British Empire brilliant TV? Gone is the weary contempt that he wears on Newsnight. Instead, he is visibly enthused by talking to ordinary people in far flung lands. Paxman isn’t telling a new story, but he’s a gifted spinner of old yarns. Pottering around a spice market in Calcutta, going to the races in Hong
Easter – Rise heart: thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise Without delayes, Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise With him mayst rise: That, as his death calcined thee to dust, His life may make thee gold, and much more just. Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part With all thy
Noam Chomsky versus Daniel Everett, it is a literary spat with a difference: they specialise in language. Chomsky is the high priest of modern linguistics, progenitor of ‘universal grammar’. Everett has spent 30 years among remote Amazonian tribes and concludes that language is learned. He says that it is unique to a specific culture, which
Sam Leith is enthralled by the larger-than-life genius, August Strindberg — playwright, horticulturalist, painter, alchemist and father of modern literature When I’m reading a book for review, it’s my habit to jot an exclamation mark in the margin alongside anything that strikes me as particularly unexpected, funny or alarming. I embarked on Strindberg: A Life
It was not possible, as Primo Levi memorably wrote, to convey the full horror of the Nazi extermination camps because no one had survived to describe death in the gas chambers. There were no ‘sommersi’ (drowned) left alive to speak for the men, women and children driven in naked to die. Apart from Levi himself,
When almost every tale about the Arctic has been told, when the major explorers have been assessed and re-assessed, when even the most obscure bit-players have been drawn into the light, what is a polar-minded author to do? Publishers can be such tiresome sticklers for novelty, always hankering after books to fire off into some
If there’s anything full-time novelists hate more than a celebrity muscling in on their turf, it’s the celebrity doing such a good job that it seems as if anybody could write fiction. Happily for the pros, this isn’t a problem with Briefs Encountered. Not only is the book full of obvious flaws, but it also
This is a novel full of hints and mysteries. Why does the Dutch woman rent a house in rural Wales, bringing with her a mattress, some bedding and a portrait of Emily Dickinson? What is the matter with her — at times she seems energetic, at others obscurely suffering. And what is she escaping from?
Patrick Gale’s new novel could be read as a companion work to his hugely successful Notes from an Exhibition, and in fact, in a satisfying twist, some characters and even objects slip from the latter into this novel. Notes from an Exhibition centred around the character of Rachel Kelly, whose mental instability and solipsistic devotion
‘Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts; Lordie, how they could love.’ The ballad has many variant versions but the denouement is always the same; he was her man and he did her wrong. Rooty-toot-toot three times she shoot, and Johnny ended up in a coffin. Thatcher and Reagan were sweethearts; Lordie, how they could love. But
I have hitherto resisted my wife’s frequent recommendations that I should read a daily blog about the life of the denizens of Spitalfields, but, now that they have been published in book form, I can see why she is such an enthusiast. The Gentle Author is deliberately anonymous and bases his style on a combination
The lovely title of this book comes from the philosopher David Hume. The question he posed was this: if a man grew up familiar with every shade of blue but one, would he be able to recognise the hue in a chart of blues, or would it register only as a blank? In other words,
In 1971 looking back over his life, Lionel Trilling (1905-1975) declared himself surprised at being referred to as a critic. Certainly his plan when young had been the pursuit of the literary life, ‘but what it envisaged was the career of the novelist. To this intention, criticism, when eventually I began to practise it, was
There are an awful lot of prostitutes in Africa and most of them seem to pass through the pages of Richard Grant’s book at one time or another. All this puts him in a terrible lather — ‘I had been so long without a woman’, he moans at one point, this while weighing up the
Sometimes, only the purest smut will do. Scotty Bowers’s memoir, Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars (Grove Press, £16.99) is 24 carat, 100 per cent proof. Now rising 89, Scotty (pictured above in his youth) was for years the go-to guy in Tinseltown for sexual favours. Black,
It was a glorious spring day, but Tim Weiner was thinking about the folly of men. “It’s a beautiful day outside. I go past a statue of [Field Marshal] Haig and I remembered all those poor bastards who died on beautiful spring days.” Weiner has made a career documenting folly — and deceit. He won
This is the year of literary anniversaries. Dickens, Durrell and Stoker are joined by Kerouac, who was born 90 years ago this week. In addition to the usual raft of special editions and gushing talks, Kerouac’s birthplace — Lowell, Massachusetts — will premier his only known play, Beat Generation, in October. The play was only
The latest edition of the White Review was launched at Foyles yesterday evening and long into the night. The magazine is a vehicle for new writers, supported by the work of and interviews with established authors and artists. This quarter’s edition features a short story by Deborah Levy, a discursive interview with Ahdaf Soueif and poems
– Hong Kong South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin has become the first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize for her novel Please Look After Mother, which tells the story of a family’s heartbreaking search for their mum after she goes missing from a Seoul subway station. During a black-tie dinner hosted at the
Ninety per cent of the population of Florence is Roman Catholic. Apparently that’s common knowledge, but sometimes it’s the little things that hammer home the big statistics. In my case it was a recent tour of the city’s bookshops, which reveal far more besides about Florentine reading habits relative to British ones. Many of the