The posthumous publication of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s wartime diaries continues the restoration of his reputation, says Geoffrey Wheatcroft Nothing is more elusive than reputation. A writer’s standing goes up and down like a share price, during his life and after, for no obvious or objective reason, as D. J. Taylor observed in a recent perceptive essay
In the first book of his scientific-cum-philosophical poem ‘De rerum Natura’ — or ‘On the Nature of Things’ — Lucretius draws the reader’s attention to the power of invisible forces. The wild wind, he wrote, whips the waves of the sea, capsizes huge ships, and sends the clouds scudding; sometimes it swoops and sweeps across
‘Who was she?’, a browser might ask on finding three re-issued novels by Ivy Compton-Burnett, and ‘Why should I read them?’ Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969) was one of 13 children of a Victorian physician. After his death, his widow wrapped herself in anger and subjected her children to cruel, neurotic tyranny. Their verbal laceration continued
The most remarkable thing about this book is that it should have been published at all. No one could have imagined in 1961 that Private Eye — a blotchy reproduction stapled together on what looked like yellow scrap paper — would still be going 50 years later, selling hundreds of thousand of copies every fortnight
Though this book is published by Oxford University Press and the author teaches at the University of Southern California, it is really only semi-demi-academic. Steven J. Ross has conducted interviews and trawled through archives, but his instincts are for the flat vividness of journalism rather than anything more scholarly or searching. In a footnote he
The glorious monuments built in India by the Mughal emperors, from Babur in the early 16th century to Bahadur Shah Zafar II in the mid-19th century, have long deserved a comprehensive illustrated survey in one volume. George Michell is the ideal author. He is both a great scholar and a fervent communicator on many aspect
It has become increasingly obvious that something went terribly wrong with British intelligence-gathering, both its methods and morality, after the destruction of the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001. Earlier prime ministers had displayed scruples about the use of intelligence gained from torture. But during the Blair premiership this changed. Britain became part of a
Click here to view this article
On 12 February 1952 the novelist Anthony Powell received a letter from a bookseller in New York. Robert Vanderbilt Jr was the proprietor of a couple of Manhattan bookstores and a great admirer of Powell’s. He wrote to ask if he might himself publish a couple of the novelist’s out-of-print works. Powell was delighted. The
The son of a grocer, Anton Chekhov was born in 1860 in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov. While studying medicine at Moscow university, he published hundreds of comic sketches in order to pay his way and support his parents and siblings. After becoming famous in the late 1880s, he practised as a doctor only
Long in the writing, deep in research, heavy to hold, this is the latest of umpteen biographies of Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). But it should be said straightaway that it is extremely readable, contains new material and is freshly, even startlingly re-interpretative of a life whose bare bones are very familiar. The more one reads,
On 31 May 1961 Ian Fleming wrote to Michael Howard at Jonathan Cape, publisher of his James Bond novels: ‘I am now sending you the first two “volumes” of Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. Heaven knows what your children’s book readers will think of them.’ He ended his letter: ‘I am gradually reactivating myself and I hope to be
When I published Maurice Bowra’s scabrous satires on his contemporaries, New Bats in Old Belfries, in 2005 (pseudonymously), I had to leave blank spaces where two of them should have appeared. This was because their subject was still alive, and was unwilling to give his approval for their inclusion in his lifetime. (Ludovic Kennedy’s name
London has always loved its animals. James I kept elephants in St James’s Park (allowed a gallon of wine per day each to get through the English winter), while as recently as Live Aid an urban myth arose that the revolving stage was pulled by horses. The capital’s no different from the rest of the
