Inside Story: a novel / How to Write By Martin Amis Jonathan Cape £20 . It is traditionally ‘not done’ to review books in terms of what they’re not. And yet: this book is not a novel. It says it is on the front cover; but it isn’t. And Martin Amis makes it clear it’s […]
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged 9/11, Amazon, autobiography, Brexit, Christopher Hitchens, Clive James, criticism, death, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Jane Howard, food, Germany, James Fenton, Jonathan Cape, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Mystic Meg, Nabokov, nonvels, Philip Larkin, pilates, publishing, Robert Conquest, rugby, Salman Rushdie, Saul Bellow, sex, Solzhenitsyn, terrorism, the Gulag, the Holocaust, The New Yorker
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The Hitler Years: Triumph 1933-1939 by Frank McDonough Head of Zeus £30 . In the early- to mid-1930s my grandmother (Irish, South African, later Australian) lived for a few years in the east of Germany, as a language assistant/housemistress in a boarding school. Her one recorded comment about Hitler’s accession to power was that he […]
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 By Max Hastings William Collins £25 . By 1943, after nearly four years of war ‘ameliorated [only] by a thin gruel of successes,’ Britain and her western allies had little to boast in terms of their offensive victories; the lion’s share of the burden was very clearly being shouldered by […]
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged Bomber Command, Dambusters, death, engineering, film, Germany, Guy Gibson, history, Max Hastings, non-fiction, RAF, Sir Arthur Harris, Sir Charles Portal, the Commonwealth, war, William Collins, WW2
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Monday, November 26, 2018
(in loving memory of its former incarnation) . Colombo. The Galle and Pallakele matches lately over, the series lost, and the selectors falling back on Maitland Place in hopes of inspiration for the third and final test. The last of the erratic rains now gone, the water in the half-uncovered sewers stagnant, rank with garbage. […]
Filed in Fictions
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Also tagged Australia, Bambalapitiya, Bata, bats, buses, chicken, Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo, cricket, crows, Dickens, dogs, Don Bradman, Eden Gardens, frangipani, Galle Pallakele, Greg Chappell, Havelock Town, hotels, Ian Botham, India, Lion lager, Lord's, Maitland Place, Mount Lavinia, Muttiah Muralitharan, Newlands, newspapers, parties, R Premadasa International Cricket Stadium, school, Shane Warne, Slave Island, Sri Lanka, the British Council, the Chinese, The Cricket Club Café, the English, the West Indies, Wasim Akram
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Wednesday, October 31, 2018
On Andrew Roberts’ Churchill: Walking with Destiny. — For The Oldie
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Two nights from now, by way of (ahem) a birthday present, I will be attending a live-orchestra screening of The English Patient at the Albert Hall. I had invited an old friend, a raven-haired young lady (named in Debrett’s) of impossibly romantic tendency, who first exposed me to the film in, I’d say, about 1998 […]
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged Academy Awards, Afghanistan, Ahmed Hassanein, air travel, American University in Cairo, anatomy, Anthony Minghella, Arabic, army, Banana Republic, bedouin, Benny Goodman, Booker Prize, books, bookshops, Brighton, Bruce Chatwin, Byron, Canada, Charing Cross Road, Christopher Hitchens, clothing, Debrett's, deserts, Dorset, Egypt, Egyptology, exploration, film, French Foreign Legion, Gabriel Yared, Geoff Dyer, Geographical, Geographical Journal, Herodotus, Hungarian, Hungary, JM Coetzee, John Ball, John Hare, Joseph Conrad, Justin Marozzi, Kensington Gore, Kristen Scott Thomas, László Almásy, London, Long Range Desert Group, Lorenz Hart, love, Michael Ondaatje, mountains, music, novels, Orientalism, Oscar Wilde, Oxford, Picador, plums, Ralph Bagnold, Ralph Fiennes, Ranulph Fiennes, Richard Bermann, Robert Twigger, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Geographical Society, Saul Kelly, Sinai, SOE, song, South Africa, the Himalayas, the Nile, the Sahara, the Western Desert, war, WG Sebald, William Golding, wind, women, WW2, YouTube, Zerzura
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Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Itchin’ for a Twitch Inn, at the Heritage weekend. — For The Oldie
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged Battle of Britain, Douces Manor, Dunkirk, fine dining, Germans, graffiti, Guy Gibson, Heritage Open Days, Idi Amin, John Cunningham, Kent, Maidstone, North Downs, Peter Townsend, pubs, RAF, Tesco, The Beatles, The Dambusters, The Malling Society, Twitch Inn, West Malling, WW1, WW2
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Tuesday, September 4, 2018
About the Bruegels on my bedroom wall. — For The Oldie
Filed in correspondence, Journalism
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Also tagged AA Gill, anatomy, art, Athena International, Bath, Brussels, Carmina Burana, chickens, childhood, death, Don DeLillo, drawing, drink, etching, Flanders, Fleet Foxes, gambling, Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Jürgen Müller, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Nabokov, painting, peasantry, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Bruegel the Younger, pissing, religion, TASCHEN, the Duke of Alba, the Habsburgs, The Holburne Museum, the Spanish Inquisition, the tower of Babel, Thomas Schauerte, Tom Frantzen, Vienna, war, weddings, WH Auden
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Wednesday, August 15, 2018
‘For centuries before the Second World War, educated British people knew far more about intelligence operations recorded in the Bible than they did about the role of intelligence at any moment in their own history.’ Nowadays, one might think, few would even know that. But that’s where Christopher Andrew – Emeritus Professor of Modern and […]
Filed in Journalism, review
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Also tagged Afghanistan, Allen Lane, America, Ancient Egypt, army, Bletchley Park, Cardinal Richelieu, China, Christianity, Christopher Andrew, Christopher Marlowe, CIA, Clausewitz, Elizabeth I, Francis Walsingham, history, Holland, India, Islam, Israel, Ivan the Terrible, Julius Caesar, MI5, MI6, Napoleon, non-fiction, Pearl Harbour, Russia, spies, Stalin, Sun Tzu, the Bible, the Cold War, the KGB, the Medway, the Spanish Armada, University of Cambridge, Vasili Mitrokhin, Venice, war, Waterloo, WWII, Xenophon
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In the Autumn of 2014, feeling somewhat down about his wordsmithing career, uncertain in his role as model for his two sons, and with one eye on the health of his own father, Toby Litt decided to take on the oft-postponed biography of great-great-great-grandfather William. An undefeated prize-fighter and winner of 200 belts in the […]