Non-fiction

Saturday

Jonathan Mirsky

Charmed out of their minds

David Cameron probably didn’t need reminding while he was in China what fools intelligent people can be when they visit authoritarian regimes. David Cameron probably didn’t need reminding while he was in China what fools intelligent people can be when they visit authoritarian regimes. ‘Useful idiots’, as Lenin didn’t say, they make allowances for dishonesty, even horrors, which they never would at home, express guilt for the past of their own countries, use words like ‘progress’ for the place they are briefly visiting, and accept at face-value hospitality and words which normal consideration would tell them were well-rehearsed and manipulative. Patrick Wright, a journalist and historian, describes the three ‘missions’

John Preston

Unpredictable pleasures

As befits a magazine with an erudite and international readership, I shall begin this review with a short salutation in the Western Greenland Eskimo language: ‘Ata, sûlorsimavutit!’ The phrase, as some of you — although I fear reprehensibly few — will know means: ‘Well, now you have again relieved yourself in your trousers.’ One can, I think, deduce two things from this. As befits a magazine with an erudite and international readership, I shall begin this review with a short salutation in the Western Greenland Eskimo language: ‘Ata, sûlorsimavutit!’ The phrase, as some of you — although I fear reprehensibly few — will know means: ‘Well, now you have again

Ian Thomson

So far from God . . .

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s second largest border city, is clogged with rubbish, fouled with car exhaust and, increasingly, flooded with narcotics. Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s second largest border city, is clogged with rubbish, fouled with car exhaust and, increasingly, flooded with narcotics. Mexican drug cartels are now so deeply ingrained in the city’s political and social fabric that not a single bar or shop remains ‘un-narcotised’. Mexico in the 21st century, according to Ed Vulliamy, is a nation shadowed by gangland enterprise and the rat-tat-tat of Kalashnikovs. To live on the US-Mexican border, how ever, calls for special qualities of endurance. The four US states bordering Mexico — Texas, New Mexico, Arizona

Philip Ziegler

How we roared!

To most people Christopher Plummer means Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Plummer would not be in the least ashamed by this. A year or so ago he found himself forced to watch the film at a children’s Easter party: The more I watched, the more I realised what a terrific movie it is. The very best of its genre — warm, touching, joyous and absolutely timeless. Here was I, cynical old sod that I am, being totally seduced by the damn thing — and, what’s more, I felt a sudden surge of pride that I’d been a part of it. It is an odd book, though. The

The Spectator

Books of the Year | 20 November 2010

Philip Hensher The English novel I liked best this year was Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow (Cape, £18.99) — humane, rueful and wonderfully resourceful in its wit. Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (Fourth Estate, £20) was simply a marvel of technique, observation and sympathy. At the other end of the artistic spectrum, Lydia Davis’s Collected Stories (Hamish Hamilton, £20) were a must for anyone seriously interested in the means of fiction. All three were, among other things, masterpieces of comedy. The memoir of suffering now has its own section in bookshops. Few of them deserve one’s attention, but Candia McWilliam’s magnificent What To Look For In Winter (Cape, £16.99) transcends its apparent

Thursday

Christopher Meyer

Sir Christopher Meyer reviews George Bush’s memoirs

Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to the United States, has reviewed George Bush’s biography for the latest issue of The Spectator. We’ve pasted his entire review below, for readers of our Book Blog. Taking the long view, Christopher Meyer, The Spectator, 20 November 2010 While Tony Blair emerged from his memoirs as a chameleon of many colours, there is only one George W. Bush in Decision Points. The book reads like the man speaks. If it has been ghosted — and Bush gives thanks to a multitude of helpers — it has been done with consummate skill to preserve the authentic Bush voice. The result will be unexpected,

Saturday

Philip Hensher

The man and the myth

Tolstoy’s legend is not what it was; but sometimes the world needs idealised versions of ordinary men, argues Philip Hensher The truism that Tolstoy was the greatest of novelists hasn’t been seriously questioned in the last century. The nearest competition comes from Proust and Thomas Mann, I suppose. But when you compare two similar moments in the writings of Tolstoy and one of these other supreme novelists, a difference emerges. Both War and Peace and In Search of Lost Time culminate in a glimpse of the next generation. In Proust, the two irreconcilable worlds of the novel, the Guermantes ‘walk’ and the ‘walk by Swann’s place’ meet surprisingly, at the

Nicky Haslam

Deadlier than the Mail

This is an effervescent, elegantly written and faultlessly researched romp through the life and times of someone whose name in Britain was spoken with genuine fondness by an urbane few, with self-righteous anger by some and with disdain or fascination by almost everybody who can read — as, like it or not, very few people don’t enjoy gossip. This is an effervescent, elegantly written and faultlessly researched romp through the life and times of someone whose name in Britain was spoken with genuine fondness by an urbane few, with self-righteous anger by some and with disdain or fascination by almost everybody who can read — as, like it or not,

Francis King

The odd couple

Some years ago now I bought from the artist Robert Buhler a pastel portrait of the composer Lennox Berkeley (reproduced above). Since I knew neither of the two men well (although in the case of each I admired the work without having an irresistible enthusiasm for it), even today people often ask me why I made the purchase. The answer is that in that one work Buhler shows so much more than his usual blithe accomplishment; he is perfect not merely in his portrayal of his sitter’s outward features but also in conveying an inner character of brooding spirituality. Tony Scotland’s book performs the same feat. He miraculously catches a

Raymond Carr

A split personality

By the 1970s Ronald Fraser had established himself as an expert on modern Spain and an authority on its oral history, when that discipline was an exotic new concept. As a radical socialist, and a friend of the Marxist historian Perry Anderson, he published a series of distinguished books on popular risings and guerrilla warfare in 19th-century Spain. It was society seen from below. But no one reading the first edition of Fraser’s memoir, published in 1984, would have guessed any of this. Only in a new introduction does he mention his friendship with Gerald Brenan, whose The Spanish Labyrinth was a sacred text to all of us who wrote

Douglas Hurd

A going-away present

A great time ago when the world was young there was a pleasant and harmless custom by which a British ambassador when leaving his post could sit down and write a valedictory dispatch to the Foreign Secretary. This was not compulsory; often an ambassador withheld his opinions until he was leaving not just a particular post but the foreign office as a whole. The motives of the valedictory dispatch varied. Some ambassadors concentrated on summarising the country in which they had last served; others attempted to sum up the whole period of their service. Some took the opportunity to deplore the present state of Britain; others told amusing stories; almost

Harry Mount

Piling Pelion on Ossa

Bettany Hughes is the Nigella Lawson of the classical world — all tumbling raven curls and smoky-voiced seduction, as she takes telly viewers through the greatest hits of the olden days; recent programmes have covered the Spartans, Athens and the Bible. Bettany Hughes is the Nigella Lawson of the classical world — all tumbling raven curls and smoky-voiced seduction, as she takes telly viewers through the greatest hits of the olden days; recent programmes have covered the Spartans, Athens and the Bible. She’s just been on Radio 4 talking about Britain under the Romans. She’s no slouch on the academic side, either: a scholar at Oxford and a research fellow

Judith Flanders

A palace in miniature

There’s nothing like a really good wallow in nostalgia. There’s nothing like a really good wallow in nostalgia. And if it can be arranged so that the nostalgia is for a time that never was, that’s even better. So it is hardly surprising that when, after the horrors of the first world war, Princess Marie Louise, Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, approached Sir Edwin Lutyens to design a dolls’ house for Queen Mary, they settled stylistically on creating a house firmly rooted in that semi- mythical long Edwardian pre-war summer, when God was clearly an Englishman, his home was his (miniature) castle, and his servants were, decently, not only omnipresent but also

William Joll

Labour of love

I visited the Hebridean island of Canna in May 2008 — Canna being John Lorne Campbell’s island, donated by him to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 — and was immediately struck by three things, all of which presented a considerable contrast to the island of Colonsay, some little way to the south, where I live. I visited the Hebridean island of Canna in May 2008 — Canna being John Lorne Campbell’s island, donated by him to the National Trust for Scotland in 1981 — and was immediately struck by three things, all of which presented a considerable contrast to the island of Colonsay, some little way to the

Saturday

Sam Leith

Far from idealism

If you think the Special Relationship has been looking strained in recent years, consider its condition during the American Civil War(1861-65). In 1863, an anonymous letter was delivered to Charles Francis Adams at the US legation in London: Dam the Federals. Dam the Confederates.Dam you both. Kill you damned selves for the next 10 years if you like; so much the better for the world and for England. Thus thinks every Englishman with any brains. NB PS We’ll cut your throats fast enough afterwards for you if you ain’t tired of blood, you devils. Brevity, they say, is the first grace of style. The feeling that letter encapsulates ran pretty

Mary Keen

Vale of tares

‘Feather footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.’ Nature writing used to be a subject for ridicule. ‘Feather footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole.’ Nature writing used to be a subject for ridicule. Evelyn Waugh, the arch sneerer, might have found it harder to parody the modern breed of literary naturalists. Richard Mabey is perhaps the best known English author of recent fashionable books about the natural world. He belongs to a group of new naturalists which includes Robert Macfarlane the Cambridge don, Kathleen Jamie the poet, and the late Roger Deakin. They are all intellectuals, whose pitch is more observant and scientific than romantic.

Jonathan Sumption

Thynges very memorable

John Leland, who died in 1552, lived less than 50 years and was mad for the last five of them. Today he is one of the forgotten worthies of 16th-century England. An enormous edition of his major prose work may therefore seem an eccentric publishing choice. Yet there are many reasons why we should remember this gentle, melancholy and rather obsessive scholar from another age. Leland lived at a time when England was changing faster than it had ever done before. Henry VIII had broken with Rome. An aggressive protestantism had achieved a growing influence, and was soon to take possession of the English Church. The monasteries and friaries which

Joanna Kavenna

In deep trouble

Atlantic by Simon Winchester and The Wave by Susan Casey are, at first glance, very different works. Atlantic is a historical-philosophical-fantastical meditation on the Atlantic ocean, from the ‘post-molten Hadean’ through the ‘cool meadows of today’s Holocene’, to the conjectured end-days of the ocean ‘about 170 million years’ from now. The Wave is a pithy account of some years Casey spent following the elite American surfer Laird Hamilton as he travelled from one storm-lashed coast to another in search of waves. Yet, on closer scrutiny, the two books have much in common: both authors are highly contemporary in the way they write about nature, with their mingling of humility and

Victoria Glendinning

Country matters

Clive Aslet was the long-time editor of Country Life, and now, as its ‘Editor at Large’, is released into the environment. Clive Aslet was the long-time editor of Country Life, and now, as its ‘Editor at Large’, is released into the environment. It obviously suits him. He writes wonderfully in Villages of Britain about building materials such as mud and stud, wattle and daub, and cob, which is where our oldest houses meet African mud huts. Cob is just earth ‘that has been sieved to a fine tilth and laid over straw; water is put on it to make it sticky, and more straw laid on top’, with a seasoning

Miles Johnson

Anthem for doomed youth

Britain’s greying post-war generation are getting increasingly used to a bad press. Britain’s greying post-war generation are getting increasingly used to a bad press. Once lauded for liberating British society, the teenyboppers of the 1960s are now vilified for squandering a time of plenty, having mortgaged their children’s futures to fund a reckless, debt-fuelled shopping spree. The Baby Boomers’ thirst for property speculation, their younger critics lament, has transformed the UK housing market into a vicious collusion between rack-rent retirees and latte-crazed estate agents. For the young, owning a house has become a distant dream. Bright-eyed graduates pump the bulk of their income into subsidising the Boomers’ buy-to-let investments, scrambling