The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Javier Marias’s elegant new volume is a collection of ghost stories, but its alluring dust jacket, illustrating the first tale, shows us a sunny midsummer image of a woman in a bikini admiring herself on a beach. Javier Marias’s elegant new volume is a collection of ghost stories, but its alluring dust jacket, illustrating the
All modern biographies, one could say, are books of secrets; certainly all biographers during the past four decades have felt entitled to ferret around in their subject’s private as well as public lives. All modern biographies, one could say, are books of secrets; certainly all biographers during the past four decades have felt entitled to
Barry Hills has never been an easy man to love but I don’t suppose he would have it any other way. Barry Hills has never been an easy man to love but I don’t suppose he would have it any other way. There are certain trainers who capture the public imagination and affection, but the
Here is the latest Bookends column from this week’s issue of the Spectator: P. J. O’Rourke is what happens when America does Grumpy Old Men. Instead of sour-faced curmudgeons bleating that ‘politics is just a load of crap’, you get a succession of amusing and incisive observations about why politics is a load of
Sebastian Faulks examines the history of the English novel through its most enduring, though not endearing characters. Faulks on Fiction returns to BBC Two with a Peter Greenaway-inspired title The Hero, The Lover, The Snob and The Villain. Mr Darcy, Robinson Crusoe, Chanu and John Self are all subjected to a session of Faulks’ post-modern
Judging by the critical reaction, Jonathan Franzen Freedom is a Marmite book. But, even those who love Franzen’s latest trip to the heart of America concede that The Corrections is a far superior book. The Corrections is a book of riveting scope, tempestuous depths and exact style: a convincing pretender to the title of ‘Greatest
Our colleagues at the magazine have kindly allowed us to republish the books of the year columns. Here’s the first installment. Anita Brooker Society is composed of two classes: the patrons and the patronised, and a change of status, the migration of the one to the other, is a subject well worth studying. Michel Houellebecq,
Here is a brief selection of the best offerings from the world’s literary pages: Whilst the chattering classes are reverberating to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, Jon Michaud of the New Yorker isn’t: ‘I breathed a sigh of relief and held up my hands like a distance runner breaking the tape. Though “Freedom” is sizable enough at
Christmas is coming, and the bookshelf is getting thin – so, any suggestions for Christmas reading? We are putting our Christmas Special to bed today, so your baristas at Coffee House would be grateful for any tips. I don’t need to say that we’re not after politics books. Coffee House is not simply a home
References to rap, hip-hop, bling and life in ‘da hood’ are a rare sight on literary pages. But, in his donnish but beery style, Will Self piloted through his love-hate affair with the genre in the Times recently. Decoded, a new book by one of the proponents of rap-as-literature, Jay Z, comes in for some
Free from the cares of office, Andrew Motion has been busy. In fact, he has been a frenzy of activity. His output on Bob Dylan, Philip Larkin and the like has been well publicised; however, the Motion Report into poetry in schools is less well-known. I still have dreams about my short-trousered self standing
Salley Vickers name-checks (surely unwisely) the granddaddy of all short stories, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, in the foreword to her first collection, Aphrodite’s Hat (Fourth Estate, £16.99). Salley Vickers name-checks (surely unwisely) the granddaddy of all short stories, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, in the foreword to her first collection, Aphrodite’s Hat (Fourth Estate, £16.99). However,
Philip Hensher finds Flaubert’s scorn for his characters relieved by hilarity Astonishingly, this is the 20th time Madame Bovary has been translated into English. I say ‘astonishing’ because, as everyone knows, great novels in foreign languages tend to get done once, if at all. Most of Theodore Fontane has never been translated, or Jean-Paul, or
Five years after his death, Saul Bellow’s literary reputation has yet to suffer the usual post-mortem slump, and publication of these lively letters should help sustain his standing. Five years after his death, Saul Bellow’s literary reputation has yet to suffer the usual post-mortem slump, and publication of these lively letters should help sustain his
It was a slender hope, a moment of lunacy really, but I picked up Reinventing Food – Ferran Adrià: The Man Who Changed the Way We Eat by Colman Andrews (Phaidon, £19.95) thinking that the improbable claim in the subtitle might in future serve to stem, or anyway divert, the tide of cookery books published
At this stressful time of year, it is important to note the distinction between Christmas ‘funny’ books and Christmas ‘quirky’ books. Funnies we know only too well, mainly from the sinking feeling most of us experience when unwrapping one on Christmas morning. Quirkies are a more recent development, trading less on jokes and merriment than
The film The King’s Speech, which is due to appear in the UK in January, tells the story of George VI’s struggle to overcome his stammer. The film The King’s Speech, which is due to appear in the UK in January, tells the story of George VI’s struggle to overcome his stammer. The speech therapist
Here is the latest Bookends column from this week’s issue of the Spectator: Salley Vickers name-checks (surely unwisely) the granddaddy of all short stories, James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, in the foreword to her first collection, Aphrodite’s Hat (Fourth Estate, £16.99). However, the less desirable influence of Roald Dahl seems to preside more tellingly in many
‘He has no house.’ Volislav Jakic’s epigraph opens In a Strange Room, Damon Galgut’s acclaimed novel. Donne’s ‘No man is an island’ would have served just as well. This is the story of one rootless man, Damon, and his fear of commitment. Ostensibly, travel is Galgut’s subject. Hope and desire are thwarted by chance and
Christmas publishing stock was in the bookshops for the end of November, so in the absence of material to review, literary editors have roasted the last of their chestnuts with Books of the Year lists. For the most comprehensive list on politics, history, art, and international relations, fiction and poetry, the Economist’s is hard to
The late twentieth century was blessed with brilliant academic historians whose writing had a common touch; Tony Judt was one of them. Postwar was his crowning achievement. As Europe’s divided halves were conjoined politically and economically after the Cold War, Judt united their conflicted histories. For instance, 1968 was about more than students in Paris
C is a Bildungsroman telling the history of Serge Carrefax, an increasingly unlikable amoral antihero. The novel is divided into four sections covering Serge’s childhood, his adventures during the First World War as a member of the Royal Flying Corps, his misadventures in 1920s London with drugs and chorus-girls (all the bits Bertie Wooster left
I doubt that Philip Larkin has ever been out of fashion, but after the 25th anniversary of his death and the publication of his letters to Monica Jones – beautifully reviewed for the Spectator by Philip Hensher – his star is well and truly back in the ascendant. T.S. Eliot, who was hardly renowned for
The Poor Little Rich Girl memoir, popular for at least a century, nowadays slums it in the misery department. ‘One particularly annoying aspect of being sexually abused or traumatised as a child,’ writes Ivana Lowell in Why not Say what Happened? (Bloomsbury, £25), ‘is that everyone wants you to talk about it.’ Does she mean
I don’t remember who it was who said ‘memory is genius’, but they were on to something. I’m not sure, either, whether they meant genius in the original sense of ‘animating spirit’ — i.e. memory as constitutive of personality — or in the modern one of ‘brilliance’. But both seem to apply equally well to
It is rare for stories to be specially commissioned for an audio book, but as Maxim Jakubowski, the editor of The Sounds of Crime tells us in a pre-thrill talk, he ‘begged’ the five writers he considered to be the best in their field to produce a new story for this collection; and ‘happily for
For Jasper Conran the country is about ‘the scent of ripe apples or freshly-baked bread’, about grand houses that ‘sleep among ancient trees’, Morris dancers, Morris Travellers, tasteful cottages and ‘daffodils dancing in the breeze’. In his book Country (Conran Octopus, £50) there are some lovely interiors, though the most striking are those of his
Here at last is a book that takes L. S. Lowry’s art seriously and treats it with the scholarly attention it deserves. Here at last is a book that takes L. S. Lowry’s art seriously and treats it with the scholarly attention it deserves. Tom Rosenthal has been a life-long admirer of Lowry’s work, spending
David Cameron was despondent on the evening of 10 May. Although the election result was pretty much as he had predicted privately, he feared that his ‘big, open and comprehensive offer’ of coalition with the Liberal Democrats was about to be rejected in favour of a deal with Labour. When we talked that night he