The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
The Labour peer and historian Kenneth Morgan is perhaps best known for his accounts of the Attlee government, Labour in Power, and the Lloyd George coalition, Consensus and Disunity, a work of considerable relevance for anyone seeking to understand the Cameron government. But his biographies of Callaghan and Foot have caused him to be labelled
Mark Amory has written the Bookend column in this week’s magazine. Here it is as a blog exclusive In the Christmas issue of The Spectator there was a review of Showtime: A History of Broadway Musicals, a book which ran to 785 pages. Ruth Leon, in The Sound of Musicals, deals with the whole lot,
As Charles Moore explains in the latest issue of the magazine, the late John Gross achieved the distinction – among many others – of being the “shortest-serving literary editor of The Spectator ever”. For this week’s archival interlude, I have pasted Charles’s account of Gross’s brief appointment in 1983 below, as well as one of
As Austen notes in this week’s discovering poetry blog, Andrew Marvell was highly political. The eroticism of To His Coy Mistress is anomaly in a largely political canon, founded in a political life. Marvell was a professional protégé of Milton, Secretary to the Republic, and he was a potent though anonymous critic of the Restoration
As promised, here is Craig Brown’s apprieciation of John Gross, published in today’s issue of the Spectator. To subscribe, click here. Mark Boxer once drew a caricature of his friend John Gross half-buried beneath piles of hardback books while glancing up from a copy of Tatler. It’s a caricature that contains a nugget of truth
For two centuries after his death, Andrew Marvell was remembered chiefly as a politician (primarily as a defender of religious toleration). It was only in the 20th century that his reputation as poet grew to such an extent that his political career became a contextual foot-note for his literary creations. Now, however, Marvell the politician
John Gross, the literary lion of his generation, died on Monday. The Spectator will publish a piece commemorating his life and work tomorrow. In the meantime, here is a selection of extracts from the deluge of adoring obituaries. The Telegraph: ‘Once described as “the best-read man in Britain”, Gross was probably best known among his
Peter Robins emailed through the following, in response to my post on “extra features” in literature, yesterday – Pete Hoskin Eighteenth-century authors were deep into this sort of thing. Pope was continually reissuing the Dunciad with extras to adapt it to his latest enemies: a new fourth book, a complete set of fake scholarly apparatus.
The spending axe is descending on local government and libraries are poised to close. Campaign groups have mapped probable closures. There’s no key as to what each colour and symbol indicate, but that’s rather beside the point. In reality, the colossal waste in local government means that cuts can be implemented without damaging services. But
We all know about the extra features on DVDs: those behind-the-scenes documentaries and deleted scenes that accompany the main feature – often uninformative pap, very occasionally sublime. But what about extra features for books? The trend towards stirring more and more content into a book first struck me when I read a Harper edition of
While looking for something interesting to read online recently I stumbled across something boring. Namely, Robert McCrum’s Guardian piece on ‘The best boring books’, listing big, grey bricks of supposedly anaesthetic prose. Two modernist novels had been singled out for critique: James Joyce’s notorious Finnegans Wake and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves. I began to wonder
Here is a selection of pieces from the world’s literary pages this weekend. Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani lambasts the decision to remove the word ‘nigger’ from Mark Twain’s anti-slavery classic, Huckleberry Finn. ‘Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works
Sam Leith marvels at Victorian Britain’s appetite for crime, where a public hanging was considered a family day out and murder became a lurid industry in itself On my satellite TV box, murder is being committed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I could probably live out the rest of my life watching
André and Simone Weil are hardly household names in Britain today, but in the world of mathematics the former is acknowledged as a genius for his work on number theory; and to many philosophers, André’s sister, Simone, is both a genius and a saint. André and Simone Weil are hardly household names in Britain today,
If you’re not quite sure what the Prime Minister means when he talks about the big society, you’re not alone. If you’re not quite sure what the Prime Minister means when he talks about the big society, you’re not alone. Before the election, a poll found that most people hadn’t heard of it and only
The legend of the glamorous artist Sheila Fell (1931–79), with her striking looks — black hair, white skin, large eyes — who died young, has tended to obscure the real achievement of her art. The legend of the glamorous artist Sheila Fell (1931–79), with her striking looks — black hair, white skin, large eyes —
My main disappointment with this collection of stories was that I had already read six of them, in publications ranging from the New Yorker to the Guardian. This, however, only goes to prove the eagerness with which I seize upon Julian Barnes’ intelligent and subtle writing wherever it may first appear. Barnes’ two previous collections
‘Every poet describes himself, as well as his own life, in his writings,’ observed Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in one of his lectures on English literature, which he delivered twice a week to an audience of young people in his palazzo in Palermo. ‘Every poet describes himself, as well as his own life, in his
God, Sweden sounds gruesome. After the rampaging success of the Steig Larsson thrillers, Henning Mankell, the Godfather of Swedish crime fiction, has written a new book. Kurt Wallander, Mankell’s morose and insomniac homicide detective, makes his first appearance for a decade. It will also be his last. The Troubled Man is familiar ground for Mankell;
Here is the latest Bookends column from the magazine The film-maker John Waters specialises in weirdos. His new book, Role Models, is a collection of interviews and anecdotes seasoned with off-beat fashion tips. One of his earliest films, Multiple Maniacs, was a reaction to the Manson family massacres of 1969. He attended a pre-trial hearing
Keats is justly famed for his late odes and their lyrical beauty. What is not so often recognised is that Keats was also a very funny poet, and that a great many of his poems are parodies, pastiches, and sometimes downright dirty. I’m afraid there’s nothing titillating about this poem, but it’s a wonderful example
A while back, the combined might of Steve Connor, John Mullan and Alex Clark huddled together on the BBC to debate the death of theory. All are veterans of the 1980s: when fiction about writing fiction and ideological subversion were all the rage. Sales and a sizeable readership were old hat. The better you were,
The epic brouhaha on New Year’s Eve was ended by a defenestration. This left my love discombobulated. More than 10,000 users of Dictionary.com have voted for the word that best describes 2010. The five leading nominations were: discombobulate, defenestration, brouhaha, love and epic. ‘Epic’ won the poll, by just 40 votes. All of those words
The Interrogative Mood by Padgett Powell is a compilation of questions strung together without discernible order, importance, or intention. Reading the first paragraph, which includes queries on horses, love, athletic ability, potatoes, and Constantinople, produces an acute sense of confusion but also intrigue. Is this it? Is this the whole book? Well, yes and no.
Julian Barnes is a modern master of the short story and his latest collection, Pulse, is to be published on Thursday. Already, it is attracting plaudits. Barnes allies structural simplicity with thematic diversity. Each character is attuned to a ‘pulse’ – an amalgamation of a life-force and an Aristotelian flaw. The range of setting is
Here is a selection of news from elsewhere on the literary web: A woman in New York is attempting to smell 300,000 books, making notes as she goes. As of 12 December, she was up to 150. It’s art. F Scott Fitzgerald, Nathaniel West, John Buchan and Isaac Babel are among the authors who may
To schoolboys of a probably now passed generation, Jack Hobbs was a hero to rank with Biggles; he also had the added bonus of being real. Leo McKinstry has compiled the first major biography of England’s greatest cricketer, an imperious, greedy batsmen still revered by cricket lovers more than fifty years after he died. McKinstry
Sir Roy Strong is irrepressible. His latest venture is to ask: ‘What is Englishness?’ England is a nation in search of an identity. For centuries, Strong contends, Englishness was synonymous with what it meant to be British. He cites monarchy, democracy, imperialism, propriety and industry as defining totems of the national psyche. Those parochial facets
The joy – and danger – of these extended conversations with film-makers is that they will skew your critical faculties. The joy – and danger – of these extended conversations with film-makers is that they will skew your critical faculties. So it is with Amy Raphael’s book Danny Boyle (Faber, £14.99). Until sifting through its