The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
This is the second instalment in our Bookbenchers series. What book’s on your bedside table at the moment? There are two books on my bedside table. I’m a Gemini so one is never enough. I am simultaneously reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre. The Book Thief is the
1) The official announcement of Tomas Transtömer’s victory 2) The one person in Britain we can be absolutely certain has read Transtömer: his translator. 3) An excellent summary of the preceding hoaxes and Dylanology. 4) John Dugdale on the Nobel committee’s chequered history in literary matters. 5) No announcement yet on the Nobel laureate in Ted
It is National Poetry Day, so, dear readers, let’s have a frivolous competition. There’s a bottle of Pol Roger for the person who composes the best poem on the theme of this year’s NPD: “games”. As this is a blog and things ought to be snappy, entries should be in the form of limericks, sonnets
How many times must a man be considered “overlooked” or recalled as a “forgotten genius” before it must become apparent to even the meanest inteligence that he can no longer sensibly be considered “forgotten” or “overlooked”? This is something worth observing in the case of Brian O’Nolan, better known to you perhaps as Flann O’Brien
David Sexton on The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy (Evening Standard) ‘It all feels very GCSE … there’s too much verbal prancing, too little that’s original being said, particularly when the poems are not personal. You end the book thinking that if this is poetry, it’s a trivial art. But it is not.’ David Annand
Inspired by Boris’s recent oration, I was going to compose an epigram in praise of his prose, a dirty limerick in honour of his hobbies and a white paper for the promise of his politics. That was until I came across the unthinkable: Boris Johnson split the infinitive. He’ll probably try and defend himself: the Mayor
This review of Thomas Penn’s biography of Henry VII, by Leanda de Lisle, is taken from the latest issue of the magazine. It is reproduced here for readers of this blog. There is something of Gordon Brown in the older Henry VII: an impression of darkness, of paranoia and barely suppressed rage, not to mention
In a non-fiction special, The Paris Review talks to the New Yorker’s Janet Malcolm about malice, anger and the importance of noticing small things. ‘Malcolm: Although psychoanalysis has influenced me personally, it has had curiously little influence on my writing. This may be because writers learn from other writers, not from theories. But there are parallels between
A new paperback edition of The Stranger’s Child is released today. Michael Amherst reviews the book. The failure of Alan Hollinghurts’s The Stranger’s Child to make the Booker shortlist has been met with widespread shock. Yet arguably the greater shock is why the book ever received such rave reviews in the first place. The examination of
Jonathan Sumption admires the sweep and bravura of Max Hastings’s account without agreeing with every word The second world war is still generally regarded as the ‘good war’. In the moral balance, the cause of the Axis powers was so unspeakably bad that their adversaries have rarely had to justify themselves. But there is, perhaps,
There is something of Gordon Brown in the older Henry VII: an impression of darkness, of paranoia and barely suppressed rage, not to mention the terrifying tax grabs and tormenting of enemies. But Gordon was never quite as entertaining, or frightening, as Thomas Penn’s Winter King in this brilliant mash-up of gothic horror and political
David Bellos is a professor of comparative literature. He is the main English translator of George Perec and Ismail Kadare, and he has written biographies of Perec, Jacques Tati and the French writer and con man Romain Gary. His most recent book, for which he draws on all his wide range of interests, is a
Even the cover is a mystery. Julian Assange’s memoir carries a contradictory, if eye-catching, title: the unauthorised autobiography. On his WikiLeaks site the author disclaims authorship altogether. ‘I am not “the writer” of this book. I own the copyright of the manuscript which was written by Andrew O’Hagan.’ He claims that the text was ‘distributed
Britain has not been lucky with her Defence Secretaries. I cannot remember one ‘fit for purpose’ since George Robertson, back in 1999. There followed, under New Socialism, the colourless provincial lawyer who helped Blair lie his way into Iraq (I forget his name, as it’s always imprudent to libel a lawyer). Then came the wee
As a child, Mark Girouard must have been easy to buy for at Christmas. An ideal gift would have been a puzzle, preferably the sort that looks easy, but is actually fiendish; one you have patiently to tease away at for hours until finally you unlock it, and long to share its cunning solution. This
Talk about timing. Just as Robert Harris’s cautionary tale about the perils of meddling with the financial markets was hitting the shelves, Greece was teetering on the edge of default and Swiss Bank UBS announced that unauthorised trading by one of the company’s investment bankers had led to $2.3 billion worth of losses. Harris has
Political sketchwriting, like most humorous writing, is one of those things that looks easy, especially to people who would never be able to do it in a trillion years. At any one time, though, there are only a couple of sketchwriters who are any good at all, and some of us find we move papers
Marcus Berkmann has written the Bookends column in this week’s issue of the Spectator. Here it is for readers of this blog: Political sketchwriting, like most humorous writing, is one of those things that looks easy, especially to people who would never be able to do it in a trillion years. At any one time,
Two big pieces of digital publishing news this week: first, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the Kindle Fire – the ‘iPad killer’. Then yesterday, the launch of Bloomsbury Reader: a new digital imprint resurrecting hundreds of out-of-print titles by HRF Keating, Storm Jameson, VS Pritchett and other writers that used to be famous. It has
Here is the lead book review from the latest issue of the Spectator: Jonathan Sumption reviews Max Hasting’s history of the second world war, All Hell Let Loose. The second world war is still generally regarded as the ‘good war’. In the moral balance, the cause of the Axis powers was so unspeakably bad that
Welcome to the inaugural post of Bookbenchers where we ask backbench MPs what they read when they’re not white paper-pushing. Kicking things off is Steve Baker, former engineer officer in the RAF and currently MP for Wycombe – when he isn’t helping run the educational charity The Cobden Centre, or skydiving. What book’s on your bedside table
The Eurozone crisis leads today’s news agenda (read William Hague’s take), with evermore dire predictions being made about the future of the single currency and the European Union itself. Many readers may be left uncomprehending as billions turn into trillions, and apparently we can’t count on the BBC for impartiality, so here is your Eurozone crisis
What do John Boyne, Tracy Chevalier, Joe Dunthorne, Anne Enright, Jane Harris and Kazuo Ishiguro have in common? Apart from the obvious? And apart from only coming in the first third of the alphabet? Graduates of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing course seem to be the only people writing novels at the moment.
The most influential authors, retailers, critics, agents, publishers, broadcasters and poets were all listed in The Guardian Book 100 this weekend. First prize went to the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos who – in addition to diversifying from books to groceries – is currently setting up Blue Origin, a company which offers space travel to the general
‘John Smith is dead.’ These four blunt syllables, as elemental and atmospheric as the first line of a classic novel, form the opening of Chris Mullin’s new collection of diaries. This is a fascinating read, crammed with gossip, jokes, insights and anecdotes, not all of them political. Mullin’s first disclosure is that the ‘decent interval’
In this compelling book, Matthew Hollis analyses how Edward Thomas, for years a frustrated literary critic and prose writer on rural themes, became all at once, at the age of 36, a poet of genius. It was his close friendship with the American poet Robert Frost which, in 1914, precipitated this long-delayed fulfilment. Married while
Carola Hicks was an acclaimed art historian, and, as she phrased it, a biographer of objects, exploring the ‘lives’ of art-historical subjects from the Bayeux tapestry to the stained-glass windows of King’s College Chapel, and now Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Wedding Portrait’, deftly weaving together the history of the times in which the objects were
Almost two decades ago, as a junior political reporter on the Evening Standard, I heard the cabinet office minister William Waldegrave tell a parliamentary committee that in certain circumstances it was right for a prime minister to lie. The words made no impression on the committee itself, but I nevertheless dashed up to my office
To be the daughter of an enormously powerful man must always be an enthralling if sometimes daunting experience. To be close to that father when, almost single-handed, he is shaping the destinies of the nation, if not the world, is to be uniquely privileged. Mary Soames took no part in the decision-making that was happening