Non-fiction

Saturday

Hugh Cecil

Beasts in battle

‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting frame of mind in which young men of that time accepted the arguments for war in 1914. ‘Never such innocence again’ wrote Philip Larkin of an unquestioning British people on the eve of the first world war, and much has been made, not unreasonably, of the trusting frame of mind in which young men of that time accepted the arguments for war in 1914. If they were innocents, even more so were the animals caught up in it all —

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Palace intrigue

Plunging into the second volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries is like opening a Samuel Richardson novel. Plunging into the second volume of Alastair Campbell’s diaries is like opening a Samuel Richardson novel. The tone is breathless and excitable and the dramatic world of backstabbing, tittle-tattle and palace intrigue is instantly captivating. Historians will scour the book for valuable new information. Practitioners of media management will regard it as a classic. Downing Street rivalries dominate from the start. The impression that ‘the TB-GB riftology’ developed after 1997 is inaccurate. War had been raging ever since Blair won the leadership in 1994 and Brown’s sabotage unit, led by Charlie Whelan and Ed

Saturday

Lee Langley

Living dolls

Born in Japan, growing up in America in the Sixties, Yoko Kawaguchi was perplexed by the persistence of what she felt to be an anachronistic image of Japanese culture: the geisha. ‘That mincing, simpering personification of female subservience to the male infuriated me,’ she writes in the introduction to Butterfly’s Sisters. Her book explores the Western portrayal of Japanese women with emphasis on the geisha, from the mid-19th century to the present day, comparing perception with reality, misunderstandings compounded by prejudice. She details the geisha’s appearance from head to toe (tortoiseshell hairpin to wooden-soled geta), and the life, from the market in virginity to retirement and/or violent death, encompassing history,

Cressida Connolly

Pig in the middle

Writing an autobiographical account of middle age is a brave undertaking, necessitating a great deal of self-scrutiny at a time of life when most of us would sooner look the other way and hope for the best. Jane Shilling took up riding relatively late (she even joined a hunt, as described in her book The Fox in the Cupboard), so she has physical daring. The Stranger in the Mirror shows that she also has emotional and intellectual courage. Unsurprisingly, the news is not good. God and gardening are the traditional refuges of the menopausal, but neither seems to hold much interest for Shilling. Romantic entanglements seem unlikely and her teenaged

Ian Birrell

Hell or high water

As his battered bomber hurtled towards the Pacific in May 1943, Louis Zamperini thought to himself that no one was going to survive the crash. If he had had the slightest inkling of what lay ahead of him, he readily admits that he might have preferred death, staying beneath the surface of the water rather than wrestling his way from the wreckage as it sank. Clambering into a life raft floating amid the blood and wreckage, he knew the odds were bad. Search planes were more likely to crash — just as his barely airworthy B-24 had — than rescue downed airmen. Only three of the crew survived — and

Saturday

Oliver Gilmour

An aura of sanctity

According to Arturo Toscanini, ‘any asino can conduct, but to make music is difficile’. According to Arturo Toscanini, ‘any asino can conduct, but to make music is difficile’. The technical side of conducting did not appeal to Carlo Maria Giulini, the subject of Thomas Saler’s highly illuminating biography. He was an immensely spiritual man, ‘an old-fashioned poet in a world of ego- maniacs and prosaic technicians’ in the words of Martin Bernheimer. In many ways the two maestri were polar opposites, Giulini (who died in 2005) being a gentle aristocratic in demeanour, while Toscanini behaved like an irascible bulldog. Giulini’s spirituality was certainly not wishy-washy and Saler indicates that the

Jonathan Sumption

On the silver trail

The Spanish empire was the first of Europe’s great overseas empires, and for many years the richest and most powerful. The Spanish empire was the first of Europe’s great overseas empires, and for many years the richest and most powerful. It was also unusual in being an empire of colonists. The Portuguese, and later the Dutch, created coastal forts and settlements which served as trading posts for high-value commodities, chiefly spices. But the Spanish extended their power into the vast spaces of the South American interior, populating the towns with native Spaniards and their half-caste cousins, and lording it over the indigenous inhabitants who worked the great agricultural estates and

Saturday

Lloyd Evans

Bookends: Divinely decadent

The film-maker John Waters specialises in weirdos. His new book, Role Models (Beautiful Books, £15.99), is a collection of interviews and anecdotes seasoned with off-beat fashion tips. The film-maker John Waters specialises in weirdos. His new book, Role Models (Beautiful Books, £15.99), is a collection of interviews and anecdotes seasoned with off-beat fashion tips. One of his earliest films, Multiple Maniacs, was a reaction to the Manson family massacres of 1969. He attended a pre-trial hearing where ‘the atmosphere was electric with twisted evil beauty.’ He later befriended Leslie Van Houten, sentenced to life for the LaBianca murders, and he now lobbies for her to be granted parole. There are

Sam Leith Sam Leith

Theatre of the macabre

Sam Leith marvels at Victorian Britain’s appetite for crime, where a public hanging was considered a family day out and murder became a lurid industry in itself On my satellite TV box, murder is being committed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I could probably live out the rest of my life watching the three CSIs, Bones, Criminal Minds and Waking the Dead without ever once breaking for a cup of tea or having to set the video to record. Is this a new thing? Sky Plus may be, but the obsession with murder? Not a bit. It all kicked off with the Victorians, as Judith Flanders’s winningly

Piers Paul-Read

A bitter legacy

André and Simone Weil are hardly household names in Britain today, but in the world of mathematics the former is acknowledged as a genius for his work on number theory; and to many philosophers, André’s sister, Simone, is both a genius and a saint. André and Simone Weil are hardly household names in Britain today, but in the world of mathematics the former is acknowledged as a genius for his work on number theory; and to many philosophers, André’s sister, Simone, is both a genius and a saint. A precocious student who beat Simone de Beauvoir for the top place on entering the École Normale, Simone Weil was a socialist

Ed Howker

What’s the big idea?

If you’re not quite sure what the Prime Minister means when he talks about the big society, you’re not alone. If you’re not quite sure what the Prime Minister means when he talks about the big society, you’re not alone. Before the election, a poll found that most people hadn’t heard of it and only very few who had knew what on earth it meant. Even some Tories deride it as ‘BS’, though Jesse Norman is not one of them. A former banker and academic, Norman was elected MP for South Herefordshire this year. And, as the author of two serious texts on the future of conservatism, he’s well-placed to

Andrew Lambirth

A Cumberland legend

The legend of the glamorous artist Sheila Fell (1931–79), with her striking looks — black hair, white skin, large eyes — who died young, has tended to obscure the real achievement of her art. The legend of the glamorous artist Sheila Fell (1931–79), with her striking looks — black hair, white skin, large eyes — who died young, has tended to obscure the real achievement of her art. She was part of a talented generation which included her friends Frank Auerbach, Jeffery Camp and Craigie Aitchison, and was given her first solo exhibition at the age of 24 by Helen Lessore at the Beaux Arts Gallery in London. Fell came

Alberto Manguel

Tenderness, wisdom and irony

‘Every poet describes himself, as well as his own life, in his writings,’ observed Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in one of his lectures on English literature, which he delivered twice a week to an audience of young people in his palazzo in Palermo. ‘Every poet describes himself, as well as his own life, in his writings,’ observed Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in one of his lectures on English literature, which he delivered twice a week to an audience of young people in his palazzo in Palermo. He was speaking of Shakespeare, whom he adored (he said his mistress, whom everyone considered plain, was Measure for Measure) but he could have

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Bookends: A man less ordinary

The joy – and danger – of these extended conversations with film-makers is that they will skew your critical faculties. The joy – and danger – of these extended conversations with film-makers is that they will skew your critical faculties. So it is with Amy Raphael’s book Danny Boyle (Faber, £14.99). Until sifting through its pages, my opinion of the director’s work was, like many film fans, given to snobbishness: that he squandered the ferocious promise of Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996), sinking to such insipid depths as A Life Less Ordinary (1997) and The Beach (2000), before — even worse — winning Oscars galore for the mawkish Slumdog

Iain Martin

Boom and bust for Gordon

Iain Martin examines Gordon Brown’s confident policies before and after disaster struck and finds them wanting In a previous life, working on Scottish newspapers, I used to take delivery of the occasional article offered by Gordon Brown. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer or one of his aides would call— on the way to the airport from some important gathering — to check that the copy sent by Stone Age fax or then new-fangled email had arrived. It had, I responded ruefully. The piece he had written for the opinion pages had most definitely arrived. It was lying there on my desk staring at me. More than a thousand words

Matthew Leeming

In the lap of the Gods

The Oxus, that vast central Asian river that rises somewhere in the Afghan Pamirs, has fascinated explorers for centuries. Its name gives us the land of Oxiana. Yet few Europeans had set eyes on it before the second world war. Robert Byron’s 1937 book, The Road to Oxiana, is an account, among other things, of a failed attempt to find it. What most gripped the handful of 19th-century explorers, diplomats, spies and sportsmen who did make the perilous journey, however, was identifying its source. While the sources of other great rivers were being more or less accurately traced, that of the Oxus was fiercely contested, owing to the unusually difficult

Cressida Connolly

These I have loved . . .

Like many bookworms, once or twice a year I am struck down with reading doldrums. Then the stash of paperbacks on my bedside table seems less a collection of future delights than a useless repository of dust. Nothing pleases. This disgruntlement generally passes of its own accord, but sometimes it takes the recommendation of a friend or a trusted reviewer to restore the pleasure of reading. Susan Hill’s lovely anthology is just the thing to rejuvenate the appetite of a jaded bibliophile. It is a tonic in paper form. Books and Company was a delightful little magazine, founded, edited and published by Susan Hill, which ran quarterly from 1997 until

Alexander Chancellor

Red badge of courage

The author describes this book as an ‘auto- biographical novel’, but since it would be quite beyond me to distinguish fact from fiction in this hair-raising account of his childhood years, I propose to treat it as if it were all true, especially as I can’t imagine anyone making any of it up. The author describes this book as an ‘auto- biographical novel’, but since it would be quite beyond me to distinguish fact from fiction in this hair-raising account of his childhood years, I propose to treat it as if it were all true, especially as I can’t imagine anyone making any of it up. The autobiography is of

Saturday

William Feaver

Another form of segregation

N.B. This review was published without its final two paragraphs in the 18th December 2010 issue of The Spectator. These paragraphs have been reinstated for the online version below. These volumes — four for now, and a further six to come — are saddled with a title redolent of lantern lectures delivered in Godalming, say, round about the time that Rorke’s Drift became legendary overnight. The Image of the Black suggests people, or things, of a certain stamp. Penny blacks, so to speak: picked out with tweezers, profiles raised, their blackness being their distinction, their black face value assessed within the swelling majesty of Western Art. That was the idea,

David Sexton

From red giant to white dwarf

Richard Cohen, who was a publishing director of Hutchinson and Hodder before moving to New York where he now teaches Creative Writing, is the author of one previous book: By the Sword: Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers and Olympic Champions (2002). This comprehensive history drew on his deep, personal knowledge of the subject, for Cohen was five times the British national sabre champion, selected for the Olympic team every time between 1972 and 1984. Its illustrations include a superb shot of the author flying through the air sideways, executing a ‘horizontal fleche’ against Dom Philip Jebb at Downside Abbey. Chasing the Sun is even more ambitious. Cohen says that when he