Philip Hensher is professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and the author of 11 novels including A Small Revolution in Germany.
Among the great works of art written in the prison camps of the second world war are Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, Viktor Ullman’s The Emperor of Atlantis, Ezra Pound’s The Pisan Cantos and P. G. Wodehouse’s Joy in the Morning. Spot the odd one out. Robert McCrum, with some ingenuity, has managed
A curious volume, this, and you would be right in thinking that anyone writing a book review of someone else’s book reviews needs to justify himself. (Indeed, the first essay in this book is a review of Sven Birkerts’s book reviews, at which point we seem an unnecessarily remote distance from literature itself — I
It’s not often that one can recommend a biography of a writer as long as this, particularly since Isherwood was not, in the end, a writer of the first rank. But in this case there is no doubt: this is a book which simply must be read, a triumph which produces from years of dense
I’m not susceptible to ghosts, and never see or sense them; my partner, who is, reports a mildly inquisitive nocturnal presence in our house in Florence, a town where estate agents all acknowledge the likely presence of such infestations, it being so common there. Who our ghost is or was, I don’t know; I am
We had all probably agreed by now that the whole memoir thing was getting out of hand, and a UN-negotiated ceasefire between memoirists and suffering readers was urgently needed. We have had more than enough, surely, of whiny books about alcoholism, rape, criminal pasts, drug addiction, all of which culminate, for some reason, in a
My favourite titbit about the Oscars is that if at any point during the Wagner- ian length of the ceremony you get up to go to the loo, a young person who has been loitering in the aisles will instantly nip in and occupy your seat, giving it up gracefully on your return. The point
David Mitchell has fast established himself as a novelist of considerable authority and power. His first novel, Ghostwritten, was published as recently as 1999, and Cloud Atlas is only his third. Anyone who read his remarkable debut, or its successor, number9dream, will instantly recognise the characteristic moves and bold gestures of this amazing extravaganza. His
Like Francis Wheen’s other books, this one ends in a deliriously funny index, which is worth the cover price on its own. One entry: Blair, Tony; claims descent from Abraham; defends secondary picketing; defends teaching of creationism; displays coathangers; emotional guy; explores Third Way; likes chocolate-cake recipe; sneers at market forces; takes mud-bath in Mexico;
Robert Browning, in life, was always immensely popular in a worldly way; he knew everyone not just in London but in Europe, and was almost universally loved over the dinner table. More than that, his shining, decent, boldly original mind leaps out from any biography, and it is easy to see how enchanting and charming
The spy novel is an essential literary genre of our present imagination. Like other popular forms at different times, it seems to sum up more of our anxieties than it quite admits. The ghost story in Edwardian England was popular because it focussed a strain of passionate morbidity; the detective story is essentially a 1930s
One has to ask the question: is this, intrinsically, an interesting subject? Personally, I would say not. Homosexual-ity, fairly clearly, is a genetic or innate human variation, comparable to left-handedness and probably occurring, like left-handedness, in about 5-10 per cent of humanity. That is, rationally speaking, about the limit of its intellectual interest: and who
This is an exceptional biography, which is just as well, since I don’t think one could bear to have the heartbreaking story it tells recounted carelessly. John Clare is one of the great Romantic poets, but his history and origins have always meant that he was either treated with neglect or used by his admirers
It started with some junk mail. I threw it out: I gave no consideration to the fact that it was addressed to a Miss Phyllis Henshaw. I put it down to some glitch in the address-sharing industry. But then the telephone calls started. The first one was from a business I’d always been rather unhealthily
There are two literary facts in English which it is almost impossible to examine, to see clearly. They are Shakespeare and the King James Bible. In both cases, the impossibility derives from the same point; that critical standards of what great English writing means stem so completely from Shakespeare’s peculiar virtues and from the values
The legendarily catastrophic life of Julian Maclaren-Ross has tempted biographers before. But the task of pursuing him, like the Hound of Heaven, through the sordid backstreets, rented basements and sodden saloon bars of his progress has always proved too much of a challenge. It is an extraordinary story of profligacy and waste which has been
I have to register a strong complaint about the misleading and opportunistic title of this book; it is not about ‘the Great Game’ as the phrase is usually understood. Various interesting and valuable attempts, such as the studies by Peter Hopkirk, have made the case that the British/Russian rivalry for control over Central Asia not
Shena Mackay has had a difficult and unconventional career, and it has taken a long time for most readers to register what a powerful and original novelist she is. Several things have counted, unfairly, against her; her subjects are not just domestic, but often suburban, which she presents with a disconcerting rapture. She does not
Superficially, Hitler and Churchill resembled each other, in the way that two very powerful leaders will. In particular, as Andrew Roberts points out, both their careers rested on a particular sort of confidence trick, an ability to misrepresent the facts of the case and thereby inspire their followers into action. In Hitler’s case it was
This is a strange, tantalising book of unintentional poetry; it is rather like a book plucked from the shelves of one of Jorge Luis Borges’ impossible libraries. The first book of the celebrated philanthropist, collector and Daimler heir, Gert-Rudolf ‘Muck’ Flick, it is a highly scholarly and lucid biography of a dozen or so great
Wodehouse, all in all, is lasting astonishingly well. His world is dated, but then it was always dated; it is basically Edwardian, and went on, barely changed, into the 1960s and 1970s. But his appeal is not the period charm of a Diary of a Nobody or a Saki; it is much more alive than