‘There never was a Churchill, from John of Marlborough down,’ wrote Gladstone, ‘that had either principles or morals.’ With the shining exception of Winston and his brother Jack, Churchill men have tended to be bad hats, but this makes them all the more interesting to read about. ‘There never was a Churchill, from John of
If the production team of The Archers ever needs a scriptwriter at short notice, they need look no further than Miranda France. For her latest book, she’s gone back to her roots as the daughter of a farming family and created a novel that’s a cross between an omnibus edition of the radio soap and
This is the ultimate ‘niche’ book. This is the ultimate ‘niche’ book. It focuses on that singular decade between the years of rockers and punks, when toffs, freed from school or army uniforms, and toughs, discarding skinhead aggression, found a sartorial meeting point. This new style, the cool child of late Fifties mods, had been
The South American rain forest is the perfect environment for a dank, uncomfortable thriller. It’s brutally competitive; life is thrillingly vulnerable; you can’t safely touch or taste anything, and, beyond a few yards, you can see nothing at all. Even Amerindians are anxious in this environment, and credit it with all manner of horrors. In
‘In the mists and damp of the Scottish Highlands, 61-year-old Sir Bartle Frere was writing a letter. ‘In the mists and damp of the Scottish Highlands, 61-year-old Sir Bartle Frere was writing a letter. Straight-backed, grey-haired, he had the bright eye and bristled moustache of an ageing fox-terrier.’ Reading this, at the beginning of a
When, during rehearsals for a production of Lorca, Celia Imrie expressed an opinion about a bit of business, a fellow player said to her: ‘And what would you know about playing Lorca? You are nothing but a mere TV comedienne.’ She slapped the impertinent thespian’s face, and quite right too. Though proud to bill herself
Sam Leith is enthralled by a masterpiece on monotony, but is devastated by its author’s death When David Foster Wallace took his own life two and a half years ago, we lost someone for whom I don’t think the word genius was an empty superlative. He was an overpowering stylist, and a dazzling comedian of
I declare two interests. I own a dog, Lily, and I admire the New York Review of Books. What could go wrong? Especially because, according to the enthusiastic introduction, back in 1999, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, My Dog Tulip won golden opinions from its first publication in 1956, notably from Julian Huxley and E. M.
What if Princess Diana hadn’t died, but, aided by her besotted press secretary, had faked her death and fled to America to live under an assumed identity? Is this an interesting question? Is a novelist justified in exploring such a supposition? I believe the answer to both questions is ‘no’. What if Princess Diana hadn’t
Draw two two-inch triangles, tip to tip, one on top of the other. A little way down the left flank of the upper triangle, take a perpendicular line out to an inch, then turn your pencil at a right angle and continue another inch. Repeat on the other side. Next, draw two short, splayed lines
A mad, muscular Sally Bercow cavorts on the Commons chair, diminutive husband on her knee, his features impish. With a few scratches of the nib, the Independent’s merciless Dan Brown, in his cover design for this biography, passes judgment more viciously than Bobby Friedman manages over the next 250 often unexciting pages. The book is
Hugo Vickers has already produced a well-documented and balanced biography of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. To follow this with the Duchess of Windsor is as bold a left-and-right as one could ask for; like writing biographies of Shylock and Antonio or Cain and Abel. ‘I will go to my grave,’ wrote the lady-in-waiting Frances
In July, the world’s most famous restaurant, elBulli, closes, to reopen in 2014 as a ‘creative centre’. Rough luck on the million-odd people who try for one of 8,000 reservations a year. It’s also a blow for the eponymous young cooks of Lisa Abend’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentices (Simon & Schuster, £18.99), the 45 stagiaires who
The King James Bible, while uniting the English-speaking world, gave birth to centuries of radicalism and Dissent. On its 400th anniversary, Philip Hensher examines the translation’s legacy Considered as a book, the Bible is far too long. Its characterisation is not all it should be: its hero, God, seems totally inconsistent, varying from a prankster
Caradoc King, the well-known literary agent, was adopted in 1948 as a baby into a family of three girls, shortly joined by a fourth, presided over by a difficult, unhappy mother and her feebly adoring husband. He grew up unaware of the adoption and has never discovered its motive. His adoptive mother, Jill, the moving
‘You must write it all down’ is the age-old plea to elderly relatives about their childhood memories. ‘You must write it all down’ is the age-old plea to elderly relatives about their childhood memories. Fortunately P. Y. Betts, briefly a novelist in the 1930s, was 50 years later persuaded to do just that. Even more
Philip Hensher’s King of the Badgers is set in Hanmouth, a small English coastal town described so thickly that it is established from the outset as effectively a character in itself. Philip Hensher’s King of the Badgers is set in Hanmouth, a small English coastal town described so thickly that it is established from the
Will it ever end? The romantic interest in the architecture, history and life lived in the country house is as alive today as it was in 1978, when Mark Girouard wrote his seminal Life in the English Country House. There are now some three million members of the National Trust — guardians of the flame
Frederic Raphael was the first man to use a four-letter word in The Spectator: the work of his fellow playwright Stephen King-Hall, he wrote in 1957, made him ‘puke’. Frederic Raphael was the first man to use a four-letter word in The Spectator: the work of his fellow playwright Stephen King-Hall, he wrote in 1957,
Henning Mankell bestrides the landscape of Scandavian crime fiction like a despondent colossus. Last year’s The Man from Beijing, was a disappointing stand-alone thriller with too much polemical baggage. His new novel, The Troubled Man (Harvill Secker, £17.99), brings the return of his series hero, Inspector Kurt Wallender. The title says it all: now that