When it comes to national stereotypes, the modern mind remains thoroughly medieval. The Death of King Arthur, which Simon Armitage has translated from Middle English, contains two insults that sound down the centuries. An enraged Frenchman says, ‘These Britons were always blusterers and braggarts. Lo, how he swaggers in his shining suit/ As if to
There has been much furore this afternoon about the bookshop formerly known as Waterstone’s. The company has decided to drop the apostrophe from its name to make it more ‘versatile and practical’ according to its managing director, James Daunt. The company is also restoring its old branding. The suspicion is that apostrophes are not digital friendly.
It was an abiding moment of the Arab Spring. As Colonel Gaddafi’s mauled corpse was paraded through the streets of Sirte, al-Jazeera cut to what it described as ‘wild street celebrations in Tripoli’. The screen showed a dusty compound, with three blokes lolling around a burned-out car, diffidently firing pistols into the air; a stray
A flurry of new reviews of Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English has landed in recent days, coinciding with a new edition of the book. Kelman’s debut divides opinion. Lewis Jones thinks it ‘miraculous’. Catherine Nixey thinks (£) that it’s ‘exuberant’ but ‘miss-steps’ occasionally. And I found that a pigeon is a less than engaging narrator, even if
You may remember that 2012 will see the launch of a new literary award. On Tuesday 7th February, the Coach and Horses in Soho will host our friends The Omnivore’s Hatchet Job of the Year. The aim is to reinvigorate literary criticism by rewarding the ‘angriest, funniest, most trenchant’ book review of 2011. The aim is
Few non-fiction writers’ books fly off the shelves as fast as Tom Holland’s. He’s a renaissance man — an overused phrase, but merited in his case. He began professional life translating ancient classics for Radio 4 and is best known for his histories of the ancient world: Rubicon, Persian Fire and Millennium. This back catalogue
Last Thursday saw a major publishing event in Britain: the release of The Art of Fielding, the debut novel by American Chad Harbach. The book has been received with rapture in the States: the phrase ‘Great American Novel’ is being whispered and Harbach is routinely compared to Jonathan Franzen, the literati’s present infatuation. The comparison has migrated
Have you ever wondered how a Nobel Prize committee works? If so, then look no further than Swedish journalist Andreas Ekström, who has disinterred the 1961 literature panel’s minutes, the Guardian reports. There is little mystery: the judges convene to discuss nominees just as any other prize panel would, although with perhaps more self-regard than is customary.
The same question arises every year: what on earth to buy my uncle for Christmas? Crisis was averted in 2011 by the admirable Mark Forsyth, whose book The Etymologicon (Icon) is a jaunty stroll through idiomatic English, guaranteed to tickle the avuncular tendency. The Etymologicon was the sale of the season, so popular that bookshops
Tessa Hadley is an underrated contemporary novelist; perhaps that will change in time. Her latest collection of short stories, Married Love, was serialised in the New Yorker last autumn. The stories I read there were hugely enjoyable though unsparing insights into the private and often loveless lives of others. Their content confirmed my suspicion that
Devout readers of the Spectator will know Marcus Berkmann well. He is a regular book reviewer and writes a column about music that no one else listens to — he admits as much in public, and does so without a shade of embarrassment. He views the horrendous prospect of ageing in the same breezy manner.
Alexander McCall Smith shows no sign of tiring, which will come as good or bad news depending on your view. He has numerous titles out next year. There is yet another instalment of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detection Agency: The Limpopo Agency of Private Detection will be published in hardback on March 1. No further
The first thing you’ll notice about the Museum of London’s ‘Dickens and London’ exhibition is that it Dickens hardly features. Dickens’ novels and journalism describe the scene, but the man himself is largely unseen — one of many artistic figures in the throng of booming Victorian London. The Spectator’s obituary praised Dickens’ skill in ‘softening
A change this week as we wind down for the Christmas holiday: Alastair Sim’s immortal Scrooge the morning after the night before. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published in 1843 to rapturous applause — the Spectator’s original review will be republished shortly. Critics praised Dickens’ success at distilling the Christian message of goodwill to
Library campaigners in Brent suffered a setback yesterday when the Court of Appeal decided that the local council was not in breach of the law when it closed 6 local libraries. The library campaigners lost on all counts, including on grounds of equality. The judgment also said that the burden of centrally imposed budget cuts was a
Death has made a telling visit to the literary world in the past week: Christopher Hitchens, George Whitman and Vàclav Havel have all died. The appreciation of Hitchens is fast approaching the precedents set by his targets, Princess Diana and Mother Theresa — an irresistible irony that he would certainly have appreciated. The growing beatification is the measure of
Christopher Hitchens is dead. His reputation as a stylist, polemicist and independent thinker is such that his legacy looks certain to be secure. Here he is talking about the art of writing, and life in general.
It’s no state secret that Britain was outmanoeuvred by France at last week’s European Summit. The Old Foe triumphed and their political establishment has been, in the words of Monty Python’s The Holy Grail, farting in our general direction ever since. President Sarkozy has described David Cameron as an indignant child and the Parisian equivalent
American author Russell Hoban died yesterday, aged 86. I’ve never read a word of Hoban, nor do I know anything about him: so the obituaries made for very interesting reading. There appear to have been two Russell Hobans. The first was the dreamy writer of children’s books; the second was an émigré in London who
Naguib Mahfouz would have been 100 years old last Sunday (he died in 2006 aged 94). Mahfouz was the first Arabic writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was renowned for describing, in the words of the New York Times’ obituary, ‘the scent, colour and texture of life in the streets of his