Byron Rogers
Rhys Davies by Meic Stephens (Parthian, £20). This is the first full-length biography of the grocer’s son from the Valleys who, in the course of a long and industrious life spent mainly in London (where guardsmen were), wrote over 100 short stories and 20 novels and was hailed as the Welsh Chekhov. Helpfully, he encouraged his countrymen to follow his example: ‘Stop thinking of yourself as a Welsh writer. Consort as much as possible with people who dislike Wales or, better still, are completely indifferent to her.’ A funny and quite delightful book.
John Preston
Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s The Pike: Gabriele d’Annunzio, Poet, Seducer and Preacher of War (Fourth Estate, £25) is a cracker of a biography, an extraordinary story of literary accomplishment, passionate war-mongering and sexual incorrigibility — d’Annunzio’s housekeeper was expected to have sex with him at least three times a day. But rather than tell it chronologically, Hughes-Hallett has done something much bolder, giving us d’Annunzio’s life in a series of illuminated flashes.
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