The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
In the first book of his scientific-cum-philosophical poem ‘De rerum Natura’ — or ‘On the Nature of Things’ — Lucretius draws the reader’s attention to the power of invisible forces. The wild wind, he wrote, whips the waves of the sea, capsizes huge ships, and sends the clouds scudding; sometimes it swoops and sweeps across
‘Who was she?’, a browser might ask on finding three re-issued novels by Ivy Compton-Burnett, and ‘Why should I read them?’ Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) was one of 13 children of a Victorian physician. After his death, his widow wrapped herself in anger and subjected her children to cruel, neurotic tyranny. Their verbal laceration continued
The most remarkable thing about this book is that it should have been published at all. No one could have imagined in 1961 that Private Eye — a blotchy reproduction stapled together on what looked like yellow scrap paper — would still be going 50 years later, selling hundreds of thousand of copies every fortnight
Though this book is published by Oxford University Press and the author teaches at the University of Southern California, it is really only semi-demi-academic. Steven J. Ross has conducted interviews and trawled through archives, but his instincts are for the flat vividness of journalism rather than anything more scholarly or searching. In a footnote he
The glorious monuments built in India by the Mughal emperors, from Babur in the early 16th century to Bahadur Shah Zafar II in the mid-19th century, have long deserved a comprehensive illustrated survey in one volume. George Michell is the ideal author. He is both a great scholar and a fervent communicator on many aspect
It has become increasingly obvious that something went terribly wrong with British intelligence-gathering, both its methods and morality, after the destruction of the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. Earlier prime ministers had displayed scruples about the use of intelligence gained from torture. But during the Blair premiership this changed. Britain became part of a
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On 12 February 1952 the novelist Anthony Powell received a letter from a bookseller in New York. Robert Vanderbilt Jr was the proprietor of a couple of Manhattan bookstores and a great admirer of Powell’s. He wrote to ask if he might himself publish a couple of the novelist’s out-of-print works. Powell was delighted. The
The son of a grocer, Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov. While studying medicine at Moscow university, he published hundreds of comic sketches in order to pay his way and support his parents and siblings. After becoming famous in the late 1880s, he practised as a doctor only
Born in the same year as John Lennon (1940), I was a sucker for the Beatles from the start. They were the accompaniment of my youth, love’s obbligato. I liked their music because it replaced the raw animality of rock ‘n’ roll with sophisticated melody. I think Schubert would have been proud to have composed
Long in the writing, deep in research, heavy to hold, this is the latest of umpteen biographies of Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). But it should be said straightaway that it is extremely readable, contains new material and is freshly, even startlingly re-interpretative of a life whose bare bones are very familiar. The more one reads,
On 31 May 1961 Ian Fleming wrote to Michael Howard at Jonathan Cape, publisher of his James Bond novels: ‘I am now sending you the first two “volumes” of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Heaven knows what your children’s book readers will think of them.’ He ended his letter: ‘I am gradually reactivating myself and I hope to be
London has always loved its animals. James I kept elephants in St James’s Park (allowed a gallon of wine per day each to get through the English winter), while as recently as Live Aid an urban myth arose that the revolving stage was pulled by horses. The capital’s no different from the rest of the
To mark the death of Christopher Hitchens, here is a piece he wrote in June 1986 to commemorate the life of Jorge Luis Borges. Jorge Luis Borges, Christopher Hitchens, The Spectator, 21 June 1986 Christopher Hitchens recalls a meeting with the Argentine poet, who died last Saturday ‘This is my country and it might be
Nicola Shulman’s study of Sir Thomas Wyatt and his times, Graven With Diamonds, is both sparkling and scholarly. Nothing I’ve ever read about the court of Henry VIII has made it so vivid. For the first time one could really grasp Anne Boleyn’s wit and intelligence, both of which she must have needed, to keep
The TS Eliot Prize hedge-fund furore has been making headlines for more than a week. Even the Spectator has devoted space to the controversy caused by John Kinsella and Alice Oswald, whose motives were initially unclear. Kinsella has since taken to the pages of the New Statesman to explain himself. He says that he has
Christopher Hitchens is dead. His reputation as a stylist, polemicist and independent thinker is such that his legacy looks certain to be secure. Here he is talking about the art of writing, and life in general.
It’s no state secret that Britain was outmanoeuvred by France at last week’s European Summit. The Old Foe triumphed and their political establishment has been, in the words of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, farting in our general direction ever since. President Sarkozy has described David Cameron as an indignant child and the Parisian equivalent
Last week saw poets Alice Oswald and John Kinsella withdraw from the shortlist of the TS Eliot Prize. Their refusal to be in the running for this prestigious award was on the grounds that the Poetry Book Society, which runs it, is sponsored by hedge fund manager Aurum Funds. Oswald said that she thought ‘poetry
Even in translation, Michel Houellebecq’s novels are witty, mad (particularly in translation) and sickeningly funny. I’m reading his latest, The Map and the Territory, which won the Prix Goncourt last year. As expected, author and characters are superb in their disgust with and contempt for the world in general, and especially France, art, tourism and
American author Russell Hoban died yesterday, aged 86. I’ve never read a word of Hoban, nor do I know anything about him: so the obituaries made for very interesting reading. There appear to have been two Russell Hobans. The first was the dreamy writer of children’s books; the second was an émigré in London who
This week Ian Rankin tells us which Jilly Cooper heroine he would sleep with and the title he’d give his self-help book. 1) As a child, what did you read under the covers? Enid Blyton books and lots and lots of comics (Victor, Hotspur, plus annuals dedicated to those same comics). 2) Has a
Naguib Mahfouz would have been 100 years old last Sunday (he died in 2006 aged 94). Mahfouz was the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was renowned for describing, in the words of the New York Times’ obituary, ‘the scent, colour and texture of life in the streets of his
In her biography of William Morris Fiona MacCarthy opened a window onto the brilliantly talented yet curiously anaemic world of the Pre-Raphaelites and their associates. In The Last Pre-Raphaelite she switches her attention to Morris’s once great friend and later stern critic, Edward Burne-Jones. Her scholarship is exemplary; her style fluent; her judgment discriminating; above
‘Castrati were even said to know the ‘secret des Lesbiennes’ when it came to giving women sexual pleasure, cheerfully making up for their cruel loss with improvised dildos made of wax.’ Helen Berry’s The Castrato and His Wife, a broadly biographical study of a castrated Italian opera singer named Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci, describes the sexual
Obviously Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child is a masterpiece. So is Ian Donaldson’s Ben Jonson. But having already said as much in these pages, I mention them only in passing. You’re less likely to have heard about Grant Morrison’s clever, passionate Supergods, but I urge it on you if you have any interest in myth,
Spectator readers have gone where seasoned pros Alice Oswald and John Kinsella feared to tread: by writing a poem about the present ascent of money. The entries for the last online poetry competition were of a typically witty standard, many thanks for submitting them. Particular praise goes to the poems written by Basil Ransome Davis,
The Press Association is reporting that Matthew Crawley (AKA Dan Stevens) will be on the Booker panel next year. Sir Peter Stothard is the chairman of the judges and he will be joined by broadcaster and historian Amanda Foreman and academics Dinah Birch and Bharat Tandon. That’s a heavyweight list. Even Stevens counts as a
Faithful readers of the Spectator will recall that Jeffrey Bernard was frequently ‘unwell’, usually after having dropped by the Coach and Horses in Soho. Bernard is not the only writer to have darkened that particular pub’s towels. A procession of inky soaks has stumbled through its doors over the years: Dylan Thomas, Daniel Farson and