There is none of the lugubriousness of Angela’s Ashes in this memoir of an Irish childhood in the dim days of old, before the advent of the Celtic Tiger, but Patricia Craig had her problems. In 1959, because of the ‘corrupting influence’ of her misbehaviour, the Dominican nuns expelled her at the age of 16
Coward on the Beach by James Delingpole If you are not the right age to have enjoyed the thrills of serving in uniform in a really dangerous military campaign, the next best thing is to imagine one and write about it. That is what James Delingpole has done, very well indeed. His assiduous research, in
John Walsh’s new novel is a paradoxically enjoyable account of the decline and fall of an Exeter College student of theology who becomes for a short time a performer in vaudeville and then an evangelist of Longford innocence and charity who believes he can perceive potential good in even the most depraved young women. Walsh
No 007, the hero of Richard Powers’ suspenseful new novel is a cognitive neurologist. The young man who urgently needs help is a mechanic in an abattoir in a small town in Nebraska. It is a welcome relief to read fiction so interestingly unpredictable, humane and educative. Instead of the consumerism, sex and violence of
That beautiful, untamed brunette (or was she a woman in Zee & Co.?) was once more fervid than Elizabeth Taylor in party mood. Edna O’Brien at the age of 73, however, is a circumspect Titian, with a porcelain complexion and minimal maquillage. The rebellious country girl, who ran away from a village in County Clare,
Following the success of his first memoir, The Speckled People, Hugo Hamilton has written a second one, with the balanced shapeliness and emotional intensity of a very good novel. The Sailor in the Wardrobe is the story of his rite of passage from restricted late boyhood in Dublin to independent young manhood adrift abroad. The
When publishers keep a children’s book in print for a certain number of years it is called a classic, by the publishers themselves, of course, then by teachers and librarians, and sometimes by men and women who knew the book when they were young. Nicholas, by every criterion, from every point of view, has attained
Having obsessively admired Billie Holiday’s singing for 50 years or so, having seen her perform whenever possible, having listened to her recordings again and again, and having read hundreds of thousands of words about her, I received Julia Blackburn’s With Billie in a mood of blasé scepticism. It is a pleasure to report that this
Which of the acts of courage does the title mean? In the Peninsular War, there were so many it’s hard to choose. In the seventh volume of the Matthew Hervey saga (a novel well able to stand alone), Allan Mallinson’s protagonist is a hero among heroes, when the cavalry was the cavalry and his regiment,
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
Tom Hodgkinson is a 21st-century Luddite. He wishes we could smash the principles of capitalist consumerism that enslave most of the population so they can service their debts. In this beguiling book, he persuasively advocates idleness as the way to gain access to the creativity of the subconscious mind, or at least to enjoy a
Irishness is perceptible almost everywhere, if you look with eyes half closed, especially in China, Israel and the Latin Countries of the Mediterranean. Irishness traditionally means, above all, a strong sense of family and its web of interconnections, to furthest cousinhood and tribalism. However, there is not much Irishness in northern Europe, except for the
Private collections of miscellaneous oddities, valuable works of art and all sorts of objects, animal, vegetable and mineral, of little if any apparent intrinsic value, are collectors’ emblems of the world in miniature, microcosmic claims to the whole macrocosm. This splendid book, elegantly analytical and lavishly illustrated, makes the collectors’ obsession understandable to the point
‘Yes,’ writes the eponymous narrator of this exceptionally clever, vivacious account of sibling rivalry, ‘there are many wax dolls on the shelves of my memory and I make sure I still twist the pins now and again, in passing.’ The dolls most vindictively pierced are those representing her twin sister and her mother. There are
‘What a swankpot!’ Sir Norman Wisdom pseudo-modestly pseudo-rebukes himself after listing some of the trophies in a display cabinet at home on the Isle of Man. ‘But why not?’ he asks, almost disarmingly. ‘I did get ’em, didn’t I?’ This is ventriloquial star-speak by William Hall, an expert writer-with, whose credits include biographies of Michael