The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
An avalanche in a French ski resort is thought by some to have been caused by American warplanes flying low in order to refuel on their way to bomb some hapless Balkan country. This is the first clue to one of the main themes in Diane Johnson’s L’Affaire: the dislike, mistrust and misunderstanding of all
The word ‘camp’ is often used as shorthand for ‘homosexual’. Its wider cultural sense has been best defined by Susan Sontag: the sublime treated as ridiculous or the ridiculous treated as sublime. In Sontag’s first category might be Marcel Duchamp’s daubing a moustache on the Mona Lisa. And in the second? Well, suppose somebody wrote
As plans gather pace to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the second world war, there are certain to be renewed calls to record the reminiscences of ex-servicemen in this conflict ‘before it is too late’. Most of these efforts, however well intentioned, are useless from a historical point of view. The Imperial
People, that’s to say some critics, just don’t get it about R. B. Kitaj. They dislike the way he paints, running things past us in dead heats, so to speak, drawing things together with a Huck Finn-like disregard for propriety. He’s bookish, it seems, and full of himself, which annoys them, and he can be
The introduction to Alone! Alone! is very good. It’s modest and candid, and everything Rosemary Din- nage says about book-reviewing is spot on (e.g. ‘If it’s about misery, send it to Dinnage’ — funny, I thought that was me.) Especially this: ‘It’s sometimes like writing a diary, or a running commentary of evolving ideas.’ That’s
This lucid account by a practised hand of what went on in Europe during that final year of the second world war addresses a question that has puzzled many people. Why, after putting the German army to rout in August 1944, did it take Anglo-American forces until May 1945 to secure victory? Field-Marshal Montgomery, with
The Duke of Wellington once bumped into Nelson in a minister’s anteroom. Nelson had no idea who Wellington was (it was before he was famous), and at first Nelson talked entirely about himself, and in a style so vain and silly that Wellington was disgusted. Then Nelson briefly left the room, checked out Wellington’s identity,
Atheists were rare before the mid-18th century. The 200 years from then to the mid 20th century were their moment, especially among intellectuals. Much opinion imagines their success will continue. Professor McGrath thinks it has already turned into decline. ‘Religion and faith are destined to play a central role in the 21st century.’ He here
Atheists were rare before the mid-18th century. The 200 years from then to the mid 20th century were their moment, especially among intellectuals. Much opinion imagines their success will continue. Professor McGrath thinks it has already turned into decline. ‘Religion and faith are destined to play a central role in the 21st century.’ He here
It was one of his own poets who described Charlemagne as ‘father of Europe’, over 1,200 years ago. Pres- umably that is why the publishers call him father of a continent, although in this case the continent was more notional than geographical. About a third of the land-mass bowed down to the big man by
Tom Shone, the ex-film critic of the Sunday Times, is out to pick a fight. The clue is in the subtitle of this book, a surprisingly sympathetic history of Hollywood’s most despised school of moviemaking. To the untrained eye, it will simply conjure up Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
This collection was originally published by Faber in 1993, and was followed in 1996 by Martel’s first novel, Self. Then Canongate bagged the prizewinning Life of Pi in 2002, and now, in the wake of its colossal success, they have republished these four stories, ‘slightly revised’. ‘I’m happy to offer these four stories again to
Loneliness is a pearl of great price among novelists. Fiction, drawing so much of its inspiration from groups, communities and societies, nevertheless cherishes the idea of solitude, of the hero or heroine outcast and apart, thrown upon their own resources for spiritual endurance. Think Robinson Crusoe among his goats, Jane Eyre roaming the corridors and
Joan Wyndham has written two war diaries, and one postwar autobiography; now she completes the picture with a description, part diary, part straight narrative, of her life as a child, a schoolgirl and a student at Rada. Her first three books were the story of an uninhibited bohemian. This one starts gently. Joan Wyndham began
The 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers were terrific disaster television. No special effects! How about those great shots of real people jumping off to avoid incineration? And here comes the novel, which can be read as the preview of a dramatic treatment for the script of the movie. A novel is only second best
‘You will be in charge, although, of course, nothing will happen, and I shall be back again this evening early,’ Major Henry Spalding told Lieutenant John Chard before riding away from the British supply depot in search of reinforcements that had failed to show up on time. Chard was thus the officer in command when
It goes without saying that the second world war was decided as much on the western ocean as in the sky over England. Indeed the Battle of the Atlantic could be seen as the Battle of Britain in slow motion, its critical period lasting for the first three and a half years of the war.
‘Roy Hattersley,’ said Becky, tilting her head on one side to read the spine of the thick red book I had brought away with me to the house party. ‘The Edwardians. Are there four more depressing words in the language?’ Now, that’s not fair. He may be a bit of a windbag, but he’s our
Kitty Kelley is the Heat maga- zine of celebrity biographers. Spectator readers who may not be familiar with this unpleasant (but very popular) weekly should know that public taste has moved on from Hello!. Heat doesn’t do airbrushed celebrities looking gorgeous in their celebrity homes. Heat gives you the celeb ‘as she [or he] really
The Whig interpretation of history, a relentlessly progressive account of the emergence of our parliamentary system, has long been out of fashion when it comes to politics. But histories of social policy are all too often complacent accounts of ‘the development’ or ‘evolution’ of state provision. This excellent book breaks with that tradition by reminding
Since appeasement is in the air again, this is a timely book. It tells the story of how Lord Londonderry, secretary of state for air in the National government of 1931-5, sought to avert what would be the second world war by befriending the Nazi leaders. Londonderry, 7th Marquis and directly descended from Lord Castlereagh
There is one glorious surrealistic sentence on page 6. Describing Clarissa Eden’s early adventures in magazine journalism, the authors write, ‘Her first published article, in 1944, was a dispatch from Berlin for Horizon.’ Eh? Only it gets stranger: ‘…reporting on what remained of theatre and cultured life in the devastated city’. I knew things were
At the start of this sixth and final volume of Ferdinand Mount’s novel sequence A Chronicle of Modern Twilight, the narrator Aldous (Gus) Cotton is about to take premature retirement from the Civil Service, having found, to his chagrin, that he has been passed over for the promotion that he thought to be his due.
A Prison Diary, Volume II: Purgatoryby Jeffrey ArcherPan, £6.99, pp. 310, ISBN 0330426370 A Prison Diary, Volume III: Heavenby Jeffrey ArcherMacmillan, £18.99, pp. 478, ISBN 1405032626 In an extraordinary fax to the Director-General of the Prison Service, Martin Narey, the Home Secretary David Blunkett set down his feelings in an unequivocally forthright manner: I am
This is a brilliant tract against the times. Tallis records how the traditional vocation in medicine is ceasing to be renewed. What he says has a wider application to all professions and, indeed, to work generally. How can Britain sit casually by as a profession which, under oath, brings a lifetime of learning and dedication
Reviewers coming to this book, the second volume of Roddy Doyle’s The Last Roundup trilogy without having read the first, must be a frustration for the author. I had a struggle connecting with Doyle’s character, Henry Smart. The first volume might have endeared him to me and set him in context — it followed his
William Pitt the Younger always was the politician’s politician: an MP at 21, prime minister at 24 and dead at 46, with only two years out of office in between. Pitt dominated British politics for his entire adult life. He lived for the House of Commons and for the daily grind of government service. He
When asked to name a British prime minister other than the present one or Mrs Thatcher, my young adult patients are inclined to reply, ‘I don’t know, I wasn’t born then.’ Such an answer would not surprise Frank Furedi, the author of this attack on cultural populism; it is the natural consequence of an educational
Alice Thomas Ellis is not a person to be trusted — in the kitchen. I am surprised to find this. I have always admired her elsewhere, in her novels for instance. But there is no doubt that when it comes to food she is simply left-wing. She makes steak and kidney pudding without the kidney.