The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Of all the books on houses and gardens, inside and out, this one takes the cake. Nancy Lancaster was the possessor of those two attributes, difficult to describe but instantly recognisable, of style and charm. Together with her unstoppable energy and plenty of money, she made an indelible impression on one of England’s most envied
Santa can still be a useful adjunct to the winter solstice. If there is a child whom you especially dislike, just ask it quietly what it hopes will be coming down the chimney and the little beast will cringe away, and stay away, in embarrassment. Otherwise Santa’s time is up. He cannot even safely go
It takes pluck to write about the historical Jesus, not just because doing so always stirs the wrath of hot-headed Christians but because there is not a single ‘fact’ relating to Jesus’s life that cannot be fiercely disputed according to any objective interpretation of the available evidence. Take, for instance, the supposed year of his
The Devil’s Own Song and Other Verses (1968) by Quintin Hogg The Devil’s Own Song and Other Verses (1968)by Quintin Hogg Yes, that Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham of Woolsack fame. ‘Quite suddenly, during the summer of 1940, my personal and emotional situation was such that I felt an irresistible urge to write short lyrics,’ he
A selection from Keeping My Words: An Anthology from Cradle to Grave by Magnus Magnusson (Hodder & Stoughton, £6.99, pp. 280, ISBN 0340862645) What though his head be empty, provided his commonplace book be full?Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), A Tale of a Tub Lord knows what incommunicable small terrors infants go through, unknown to all. We
Here is part of an Evening Standard review of Goldfinger, written when it was first published in 1959 under the untentative title ‘The Richest Man in the World’: ‘The things that make Bond attractive: the sex, the sadism, the vulgarity of money for its own sake, the cult of power, the lack of standards.’ Over
The principles behind ‘synthetic phonics’, the latest educational reading nostrum, have been around for thousands of years. Heaps of papyrus exercises, exercise-books (and a primary school textbook) have been found, dating from the Greek world of the 5th century bc. The first thing to be learnt was the Greek alphabet, by means of a metrical,
When the hero of Cyril Connolly’s novel The Rock Pool was asked which modern writers he admired, he replied, ‘Eliot, Joyce and Norman Douglas.’ Eliot and Joyce have held up well enough, but Douglas? ‘I thought he was quite forgotten,’ one well-read friend remarked to me. So perhaps he is. But he loomed quite large
The great houses of England have been singularly blessed in their owners (with one or two exceptions) during the latter decades of the 20th century. None more so than Chatsworth and Holkham where the baton is currently being passed on to the younger generation. Both these volumes therefore have a slight valedictory quality, though they
Each time I write something about human rights in China, as I did recently in The Spectator, I receive e-mails from men, always men, doing business in China whose message is this: China is becoming a world-class economic power with its own moral standards, so why don’t I shut up and praise it for its
This is a slim two-in-one offer of a pair of previously undisclosed ‘novellas’ (actually film treatments) by Graham Greene. In 1949, when they were written, The Third Man had just been a prodigious hit for the author, Carol Reed and Orson Welles. No Man’s Land — the sole complete piece on parade here — was
The only halfway festive offering in this year’s crop of art books is Laurence Kanter and Pia Palladino’s Fra Angelico. Even in these secularised times, Angelico is still a favourite in the Christmas card stakes. First and foremost, however, this is a major scholarly reassessment of the artist’s career, but it also doubles as the
Coming as I do from a long line of hairless wonders, baldness has fascinated me since childhood. One of my earliest memories is of my father harvesting and boiling nettles to produce a concoction which he then spread on his pate in the hope of checking the premature departure of his hair. What was more
Would-be artists clinging to the belief that they are in possession of strangely unrecognised genius draw comfort from the thought of Van Gogh. For struggling writers, the biography of Herman Melville is almost equally potent. In some ways, indeed, it is even more poignant, for it is one of early success; early glamour, after the
A few years back I had an argument with Ned Sherrin (now, but not then, a friend), which I have to say he won. Reviewing the first edition of his Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations — now reissued in a third edition — I complained that there were too many old chestnuts in it. Varying
Answers to Cancer (1962)by William Gaddis The William Gaddis canon is limited to five novels (The Recognitions, J. R., Carpenter’s Gothic, A Frolic of his Own and Agapé Agape), now recognised to be among the most distinguished in American literature. His career got off to a bad start, though. His first novel The Recognitions (1955)
One of these anthologies (Late Youth) is small and sprightly, with a pretty, jaunty cover depicting one cheery old person cavorting on a pony and a second catching a fish. The other (The Long History) is large and substantial and uses a detail from an 18th- century self-portrait by Jean Etienne Liotard on its glossy,
Long after I had any need of it, I discovered one of the best pieces of advice on surviving one’s schooldays. Of course, it came from Cyril Connolly, though not from Enemies of Promise. I found it while at university in Connolly’s brilliant pastiche Where Engels Fears to Tread: In every group there are boys
Born in New Orleans in 1924, Truman Capote wrote his first fiction at the age of eight. Or so he claimed. Rarely has a writer so elaborated his own legend; not only could Capote make the wildest nonsense about himself credible, he encouraged others to add to it. Drink was no doubt partly to blame.
You don’t read Nadine Gordimer without knowing it will be about Africa and its manifold problems of which you will know too little and even if you did know more could do little about. Her new book is no exception, though I think it will trouble our conscience less than usual. Paul Bannerman is a
For his fifth travel book, Philip Marsden has returned to his roots; not to his native Cornwall, but to the country that gave birth to his travel writing. Marsden first visited Ethiopia in the early 1980s when he was 21, when Emperor Haile Selassie was long in his grave and when the country was ruled
If one was shot through the head in the battle of Stalingrad or the battle of Alamein, the sensation, presumably, would be much the same, but there the similarity would end. The second world war on the Russian front was fought on a catastrophically different scale from that in the West. In the course of
The Passing Show (1937)by Captain W. E. Johns The story behind this one-off by the author of the ‘Biggles’ books is probably best told by the editor of My Garden magazine in 1937, Theo A. Stephens: ‘The offices of My Garden were next door to those of Popular Flying, of which paper Captain Johns was,
The bookshop shelves are stacked with the usual bewildering array of children’s books this Christmas, and the first striking fact is what good value they have become, largely because, like almost everything else, most of them are now produced in the Far East, from Thailand to Cochin. The average price of a lavishly illustrated book
A good cookery book is for life, not just for Christmas. Fifty years ago many people had just one cookery book, and in Italy it would have been The Silver Spoon (Phaidon, £24.95). Now translated into English (with an appendix of recipes by modern celebrity chefs) it is the vast cookery book that almost every
From her earliest years, one attribute dominated Bernice Rubens’s life: passion. It fuelled her impressive books, her personal relationships and her reactions to the world around her. It expressed her innate generosity of spirit, but could also deprive her of the ability to consider any viewpoint contrary to her own. Of such passion there is
By a fortunate coincidence these books treat the same subject: old age at the mercy of time, the ‘blind rider’ of Goytisolo’s title. Ageing is a matter of temporary victories and final defeats. At 75, you can succeed in getting on your horse by using a mounting block and shortening your nearside stirrup leather; at
Going to Italy for his latest book, Jamie’s Italy, Jamie Oliver is, in a sense, coming home. Though he learnt to cook in his parents’ pub in Essex, all his early professional experience was in restaurants serving good, authentic Italian food. He worked for Gennaro Contaldi, Antonio Carluccio and, of course, at the River Café,