Book Reviews

Our reviews of the latest in literature

Monday

David Blackburn

Across the literary pages: John Lanchester’s ‘Capital’

It’s not a bad time to be a journalist, not wholly bad. Sure, the industry is in apparently irrevocable decline and it is being flagellated before Lord Justice Leveson. But, for the first time in years, there is a species more hated than the Hack. The vitriol against bankers is unrelenting — each week brings fresh acrimony and recrimination. The Guardian is running a TV advert that has reworked the nursery rhyme, Three Little Pigs. The pigs commit insurance fraud by framing the wolf for the destruction of their houses after having failed to keep up with their mortgage repayments. The banks, reads one fictional headline, are to blame for

Saturday

John Sutherland

Man of mysteries

It was always William Wilkie Collins’s good luck — though in later life something of a humiliation — that he was dragged along on Dickens’s coat-tails — not least in this bicentennial ‘year of Dickens’. In December, the BBC will be showing a dramatisation of The Moonstone. T. S. Eliot (no less) called that tale of theft, somnambulism, Scotland Yard, opium and wily Indian thugs ‘the first and best of detective novels’. That, one imagines, would have elicited a snort of contradiction from the author of Bleak House, but the compliment is not far off the mark. Andrew Lycett is currently at work on a full-length biography and, in the

Jonathan Bate

Fatal impact theory 

As schools are for education, so universities are for higher education. In a civilised society, children should leave school literate, numerate and with some knowledge of science, history and culture. But society also needs an elite educated to a higher level. Universities are for the preparation of the next generation of doctors, United Nations interpreters, lawyers, structural engineers, archaeologists, nuclear-weapon designers, literary critics, astronomers, economists and so forth. That’s the short answer. The long answer would require a great deal more than is found in Stefan Collini’s brisk and very witty book. It would need to range far and wide both historically and geographically, to tell us about the centrality

James Walton

Resounding successes

The British Library’s ‘Spoken Word’ series, drawing heavily on the BBC archives, has already shown quite a range — from Tennyson’s famously crackly reading of ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’ to Scott Fitzgerald declaiming a speech from Othello. Now, it moves on to the short story and, despite the curious decision to include two tales apiece from Somerset Maugham and Algernon Blackwood (none of them especially overwhelming), once again nobody is likely to complain about a lack of variety. The three discs are kicked off by Maugham’s chatty reading of ‘Salvatore’, a story in praise of a lithe young Italian fisherman. According to the final lines, this is a plucky

Nicky Haslam

Portraits of an age

By a fine coincidence, two legendary icons of British art were being feted in London on the same evening last month, and both are primarily famous, to the public at least, for their depiction of the Queen. At the National Portrait Gallery, the director Sandy Nairne hosted a dinner to celebrate the portrait oeuvre of Lucian Freud, while the Victoria and Albert Museum opened its major exhibition of Cecil Beaton’s lifetime lensing of Elizabeth II. In the 1950s these two artists were the epitome of London society. Beaton, by way of his groomed exquisite taste and laconic manner, was the epicene idol of sophisticated drawing rooms; the nascent Freud, 30-odd,

Charles Clover

Epic toy story

In January 1992 a container filled with 7,200 yellow ducks and the same number each of blue turtles, red beavers and green frogs, blow-moulded out of plastic for American children at bathtime, broke loose in a storm on the deck of a container ship on its way from China and fell into the Pacific somewhere south of the Aleutian Islands. The container ruptured, the boxes soaked away and 11 months later the Floatees — the name was embossed on each — began to be noticed washing up among the bottle caps and Japanese fishing floats on the shores of the Gulf of Alaska, sparking a flutter of news stories. The

Leanda De-Lisle

His dark materials

Like the dyslexic Faustus who sold his soul to Santa, the life of John Dee was a black comedy of errors. His vain and vulgar efforts to harness the occult for material ends often rendered him ridiculous. But there is a darker tale in Dee’s work for the Tudor state: a story of dodgy dossiers, fear-mongering and greed. During the Tudor period no clear distinction was made between science and magic. John Dee’s study at Cambridge of arithmetic, geometry and astronomy enabled him to become a navigational consultant, who worked with England’s greatest explorers. But it also helped him measure the rays of celestial virtue that emanated from the stars

Charlotte Moore

Tragedy of Antigone

Sofka Zinovieff’s absorbing first novel has two narrative voices. Maud is the English widow of Nikitas, whose death in a mysterious accident leads her to contact Antigone, the mother-in-law she has never met. A former Communist freedom fighter, Antigone was forced to leave Greece for the Soviet Union following the Greek civil war. She gave birth to Nikitas, her only child, in prison, and handed him over to her family when he was three years old, severing all further contact. Maud was the third wife of the dominant, swaggering Nikitas. She remained passive throughout their marriage; now, liberated by his death, she starts asking the questions to which she ought

Charles Glass

Man with a mission | 3 March 2012

He was a Persian aristocrat who struggled to make his country a democracy. Given to mood swings and sulks worthy of Achilles, Mohammed Mossadegh was born in June 1882 just a month before Britain bombarded and occupied Egypt. His formidable mother, Najm al-Saltaneh, belonged to the family of Qajar Shahs who ruled Iran from 1794 to 1925 and instilled in him a strong noblesse oblige that matured into genuine dedication to democratic and constitutional government. During his childhood, the country barely governed itself, yielding important decisions to the Russian and British empires that held it in joint subjugation. Mossadegh’s father, Mira Hedayatullah Vazir-Daftar, had been a minister of finance and

Marcus Berkmann

Bookends: Wasp without a sting

‘It may be hard to accept that a chaste teenage girl can end up in bed with the President of the United States on her fourth day in the White House.’ In 1962, 19-year-old Mimi Beardsley (pictured above) landed ‘the plummiest of summer jobs’, an internship in the White House press office. On day four, she was invited for a lunchtime swim in the presidential swimming pool. John F. Kennedy was, not surprisingly, ‘taller, thinner, more handsome in person than he looked in photographs’. The affair lasted 18 months and involved a lot of waiting around in hotel rooms, like most affairs. Amazingly, no one found out until 2003, when

Friday

The Spectator

Interview: Lt. Parry’s Falklands war

In April 1982, as the Falklands War got underway, HMS Antrim steamed south through the Atlantic. On board was 28-year-old Lieutenant, Chris Parry. Parry kept a diary for ten weeks which recounted in vivid detail the action at sea and in the air, as well as daily life on board ship. 30 years later Down South: A Falklands War Diary has been published. Parry spoke to the Spectator about why the sinking of the Belgrano boat was justified, how talking about war prevents suicide, and the role the British press played in the conflict. When and why did you start keeping a diary? I began my diary on 3 April

David Blackburn

The art of fiction: Empire edition

The British Empire produced some great books. Both sides of the debate over the empire’s moral worth should be able to agree on that at least. Empire was a major subject the nineteenth century’s great essayists and historians. Macaulay’s History of England is underpinned by the assumption that the history of England was ‘emphatically the history of progress’. The Whig school of history, embodied by G.M. Trevelyan, entrenched Macaulay’s ideas. Britain’s destiny was to bring progress to less fortunate people, which was reflected by the Victorian imperial policy of ‘civilising’ the globe. J.G. Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur describes that noble, presumptuous and often catastrophic aim in a richly satirical setting: poetry

Paul Lay

Put the Civil Wars back on the syllabus, Mr Gove

The English Civil War, the Civil Wars, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms: call them what you will, they are the most important and perhaps the most exciting period in British history and they should be at the core of the school curriculum throughout the UK. That is the conclusion I came to following a question put to me by a disgruntled teacher at a recent conference in Cambridge on how I would organise the National Curriculum for history. The question was prompted, quite reasonably, by a committed and conscientious professional sick of panelists like me with little or no experience of the classroom bemoaning the shortcomings of history teaching

Thursday

Walter Ellis

Reading into that good night

New York —  Call me an old curmudgeon, but it seems to me that the only way the description World Book Day would make any sense would be if, in some way, the world was brought together by a book — preferably on the same day.   But for that to happen, J.K. Rowling would have to produce an unexpected eighth volume in the Harry Potter series — Harry Potter and the Tyranny of Expectation, perhaps — when in fact, from what one hears, she plans to enter the murky world of Ian Rankin and Edinburgh noir.   So we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Even if we could wave

Emily Rhodes

Inside Books: A literary spring awakening

March is a strangely active time in the book world. Like plants that have been slumbering through the cold winter, books are beginning to wake up and stir themselves into action for the joys of spring. Please indulge me with the slightly dippy analogy, as I think it’s surprisingly pertinent. After all, spring tends to be the time that books by ‘budding’ new authors are published, and when people are more inclined to amble to a bookshop and ‘leaf’ through some books. This is a time to remember that books are of course derived from trees, even etymologically stemming from a word meaning ‘beech’. Maybe this literary spring awakening shouldn’t

David Blackburn

Dickens takes the Duff Cooper Prize

There is no stopping ‘the Inimitable’ in his bi-centenary year. The Duff Cooper Prize was awarded last night, and the winner was Becoming Dickens by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. The prize is awarded to the best work of history, biography or political science published in French or English in any given year; it is held at the French ambassador’s residence in London. Douglas-Fairhurst beat Susie Harries’ life of Pevsner, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of all Maladies, Anna Reid’s Leningrad and Jonathan Steinberg’s Bismarck. The Spectator has two contrasting reviews of Becoming Dickens. Judith Flanders said it was ‘a work of art’ that offered fresh psychological insights on very well worn facts; and Matthew

Wednesday

Fleur Macdonald

Shelf Life: Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith is this week’s Shelf Lifer. He tells us which books make him cry, describes the party he wishes he could have attended and lets us in on a ‘highly rewarding but rather sticky experience.’ Apparently, his agent Charles Pick once told him “Write for yourself, and write about what you know best.” He seems to have taken this piece of advice to heart. Those in Peril by Wilbur Smith is out now. Visit his Facebook to find out more.  1) As a child, what did you read under the covers? The first book I ever read under the covers at boarding school was Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor.

David Blackburn

The lost world of Lawrence Durrell

This week marks Lawrence Durrell’s centenary. Durrell was once the great white hope of British fiction, but the cult has lapsed since his sixties heyday. Richard Davenport-Hines recently reappraised the The Alexandria Quartet, Durrell’s most famous work. He wrote, ‘It is hard now to recapture the impact half a century ago of these novels’ heat, luxuriance and profanity.’ 50 years of sex and social liberalism in the West has obviously tamed Durrell’s ‘profanity’. And the conservative backlash in the Middle East has made his once exotic tale seem slightly fanciful. The cosmopolitan Levant has ceased to exist, replaced by corruption of a different kind, characterised by fear, xenophobia and oppression. Most modern eyes would read the famous

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Paxo Britannica

A ‘gigantic confidence trick’ — that is how Jeremy Paxman describes the British Empire. The first episode of the TV series which accompanies his book, Empire: What ruling the World Did to the British, aired last night. Paxman’s thesis can be reduced into a string of his trademark soundbites. British imperialism was a ‘protection racket’, based on the conceit that a handful of well-equipped soldiers and well-educated officials could provide stable government for the feckless potentates of India, Africa and the Middle East. Any challenge to British interests was ‘met with savage retaliation’, which invariably resulted in expansion. The answer, then, to the problem of imperial security was deeper and further subjugation.

Richard Foreman

Stealing Sherlock’s starlight

A new character emerged in popular fiction in the 1890s. He was intelligent, a master of disguise, accompanied by a faithful assistant and unorthodox in every way. But it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. It was the cricketer — and amateur cracksman — A.J. Raffles. Indeed, Raffles could be seen as a dashing alter-ego to the sober consulting detective. The connection between the two characters is further enhanced due to fact that the creator of Raffles, E.W. Hornung, was Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law. Yet whereas Holmes has flourished for over a century (and one could argue that his popularity is greater now than ever) Raffles’s star has waned, or gone out completely for most people. Yet, ironically,