Death

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Claude Choules RIP

As the nation heads for the ballot boxes today, it might spare a moment of reflection for Claude Stanley Choules. The last surviving combat veteran of the first world war, born 110 years ago in Worcestershire, died earlier this morning at his residence in Australia. It leaves Florence Green — who served in a non-combat role as a mess-waitress — as the only remaining veteran of that great and terrible conflict. No doubt, our collective memory is weaker for Mr Choules’ death. But our country is stronger, more secure, for his life. An election, by whatever voting system, seems an apt sort of memorial to his passing.

Saturday

Matthew Dennison

Death of the Author

The death of the Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad is the central event of David Miller’s debut novel. The death of the Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad is the central event of David Miller’s debut novel. A reimagining of Conrad’s final days, Today explores the nature of bereavement. Within the novel’s confines, Conrad exists simply as a character — a dying man whose profession has been that of a writer and whose working life has necessitated the presence of a secretary, Lillian Hallowes, who, up to a point, offers the reader a commentary on the novel’s happenings. Miller attempts no assessment of Conrad’s work, his literary status or psychology. In

Saturday

A.N. Wilson

Perchance to dream

This book reads like an interesting after- dinner conversation between intelligent friends. That said, it is a rambling conversation, and although it is extremely entertaining, it does not add up to much. Its ostensible subjects are two instances of scientific intelligence being brought to bear on the possibility of defying, or surviving, death. In the first case, John Gray investigates those, such as Freddie Myers and Henry Sidgwick, who formed the Society for Psychical Research. In the second instance, Gray tells again the bizarre story of the cult of Lenin, and Leonid Krasin’s belief that, if Lenin’s body could be kept in a state of cryonic suspension, there might dawn

Saturday

Bryan Forbes

A rare, unvarnished honesty: Pete Postlethwaite remembered

Pete Postlethwaite, with whom, sadly, I never worked, belonged to that group of journeymen actors who command the respect and admiration of their peers but are denied the wider honours until death claims them. How amazed he would have been by the enormous photograph that graced the front-pages of the newspapers — his unique, craggy face that had never known botox or cosmetic surgery, displaying more character than many of his more vaunted fellow thespians. It is sometimes forgotten that an actor’s career is more often than not sculptured in snow and disappears so quickly when he or she is removed from public view, for it is an inescapable fact

Saturday

Francis King

The witch in the machine

If one asks Albanians who is their greatest living writer, the immediate answer is Ismail Kadare, winner of the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005. But the tone of any discussion that follows is all too often grudging or even hostile. The books themselves are hugely popular, their author far less so. The reason for this is that throughout a period when many Eastern European writers were suffering persecution for their opposition to Stalinist regimes, the worst that ever happened to Kadare was an embargo on his work for three years. A Marxist, he managed to remain on friendly terms with the Albanian dictatorship until two months before the

Saturday

Alex Massie

When Death Freezes Over…

A fascinating and typically well-written piece by Kerry Howley about cryonics and death, published in the New York Times Magazine last week. It begins well and gets better: There are ways of speaking about dying that very much annoy Peggy Jackson, an affable and rosy-cheeked hospice worker in Arlington, Virginia. She doesn’t like the militant cast of “lost her battle with,” as in, “She lost her battle with cancer.” She is similarly displeased by “We have run out of options” and “There is nothing left we can do,” when spoken by doctor to patient, implying as these phrases will that hospice care is not an “option” or a “thing” that

Saturday

D J-Taylor

Dogged by misfortune

Unusually for a work of fiction, Tim Pears’ new novel opens with a spread of black-and-white photographs, part of an ‘investigator’s report’ into a fatal collision said to have taken place on a Birmingham dual carriageway in the summer of 1996. Unusually for a work of fiction, Tim Pears’ new novel opens with a spread of black-and-white photographs, part of an ‘investigator’s report’ into a fatal collision said to have taken place on a Birmingham dual carriageway in the summer of 1996. The victim is a six year-old girl named, Sara Ithell. Her father, 35 year-old, Owen, loses both his right hand and his livelihood as a jobbing gardener to

Saturday

James Scudamore

Street eloquence

The title of Jon McGregor’s third novel derives from an anecdote told by one of the many vivid, dispossessed characters whose voices burst from its pages: Steve is a homeless ex-soldier who agrees to help deliver a lorry-load of aid to a Bosnian town, but is turned back on the grounds that ‘even the dogs’ there are dead. The title of Jon McGregor’s third novel derives from an anecdote told by one of the many vivid, dispossessed characters whose voices burst from its pages: Steve is a homeless ex-soldier who agrees to help deliver a lorry-load of aid to a Bosnian town, but is turned back on the grounds that

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

Michael Foot, 1913 – 2010

The former Labour leader Michael Foot died today, aged 96.  A man whose politics I doubt many CoffeeHousers will share, and whose period in charge of the Labour party might not be remembered with much fondness by those who do.  But his commitment, integrity and intelligence still stand as a bright, clear example to politicians today.  I’d recommend you read the warm and thoughful tributes from Tom Harris, Jon Snow, Dan Hannan, Sunder Katwala and Alastair Campbell, among others.

Saturday

Richard Bradford

It happened one summer

For those unfamiliar with Martin Amis’s short story, ‘What Happened to Me on My Holiday’, written for The New Yorker in 1997, it was a purist exercise in autobiographical fiction; not even the names were changed. For those unfamiliar with Martin Amis’s short story, ‘What Happened to Me on My Holiday’, written for The New Yorker in 1997, it was a purist exercise in autobiographical fiction; not even the names were changed. The Pregnant Widow is a far more complex, troubling piece of work. Amis did indeed spend much of the summer after his second year at Oxford in a castle near the Mediterranean, though not in Tuscany; that would