The Black Flash by Paul Harrison
29 Dec 2012 21:23:10
On 1 May 1965, Albert Louis Johanneson lined up for Leeds United against Liverpool at Wembley, the first black player to play in an FA Cup final. Some of his teammates – Billy Bremner, Jack Charlton, Norman Hunter and the rest – would become legends in the game, but the pacy South African left winger was hardly out of place. Bremner described him as "incredible … he would spin and leave defenders 10 yards behind in the blink of an eye." Sir Alf Ramsey, England's 1966 World Cup-winning manager, l... Read Full Story
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
29 Dec 2012 01:40:14
We learn that Changez is a highly educated Pakistani who worked as a financial analyst for a prestigious firm in New York. But after a disastrous love affair and the September 11 attacks, his western life collapses and he returns disillusioned and alienated to Pakistan.
All of this Changez reveals in an almost archly formal, and epically one-sided, conversation with the mysterious stranger that rolls back and forth over his developing concern with issues of cultural identity, American power and... Read Full Story
Events, Dear Boy, Events edited by Ruth Winstone
27 Dec 2012 01:04:58
Towards the end of this book, Ruth Winstone, who has previously edited three volumes of diaries by the former Labour MP Chris Mullin and an exhausting nine volumes by Tony Benn, speculates that "the political diary may well have reached its natural end." Blogs and social networking sites, she suggests, have replaced "an essentially reflective private activity … with instant communication, shared with hundreds of thousands of people". Her book – a collection of brief diary extracts from 75 author... Read Full Story
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson
27 Dec 2012 01:03:08
In The Book of Barely Imagined Beings Caspar Henderson tells us that "for much of human history attempts to understand and define ourselves have been closely linked to how we see and represent other animals." Bestiaries are not just classical or medieval works, but part of a tradition that stretches back to the cave paintings of Lascaux and Chauvet, art that is painstakingly accurate as well as possessed of great symbolic power. Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, he asked ... Read Full Story
The Richard Burton Diaries edited by Chris Williams
27 Dec 2012 01:01:17
The book would have been twice as long had Burton written it with any consistency: there are entries for only a single year (1960) between the schooldays and the post-Cleopatra years of 1965-72, and there are then two further sizable breaks in the 70s and 80s. But with his passion for literature, devotion to education and pride in the brief period spent teaching undergraduates at Oxford, Burton would have felt honoured to be published by Yale and to have had his book edited and annotated in a sc... Read Full Story
And Man Created God by Selina O'Grady
25 Dec 2012 02:09:11
That there are parallels between the New Testament story of Jesus and other mythologies is not a new insight: Max Muller and James Frazer analysed the similarities between Egyptian, Greek and even Norse accounts of a dying and reborn god. More recently, Geza Vermes has noted the striking resemblances between the gospel accounts and stories about Hanina ben Dosa and the Essene community as reconstructed through the Dead Sea scrolls. O'Grady's scope is wider and more historical; the book takes in ... Read Full Story
Happy Valley by Patrick White
25 Dec 2012 02:04:39
White was a natural gnostic – he believed people were divided between, on the one hand, those who know, and perceive the world with a tentative, costly but exacting sharpness and delicacy; and on the other, the mass of chancers and doltish worthies who seem to flourish in it. In White, the meek certainly don't inherit the earth, nor is the earth worthy of them. It is a fallen place in tune spiritually with the novel's Mr Belper, bank manager and unreliable financial prophet, and with Furlow, the... Read Full Story
The Richard Burton Diaries edited by Chris Williams
20 Dec 2012 16:31:06
The book would have been twice as long had Burton written it with any consistency: there are entries for only a single year (1960) between the schooldays and the post-Cleopatra years of 1965-72, and there are then two further sizable breaks in the 70s and 80s. But with his passion for literature, devotion to education and pride in the brief period spent teaching undergraduates at Oxford, Burton would have felt honoured to be published by Yale and to have had his book edited and annotated in a sc... Read Full Story
Happy Valley by Patrick White
20 Dec 2012 16:29:18
White was a natural gnostic – he believed people were divided between, on the one hand, those who know, and perceive the world with a tentative, costly but exacting sharpness and delicacy; and on the other, the mass of chancers and doltish worthies who seem to flourish in it. In White, the meek certainly don't inherit the earth, nor is the earth worthy of them. It is a fallen place in tune spiritually with the novel's Mr Belper, bank manager and unreliable financial prophet, and with Furlow, the... Read Full Story
Harbour Nocturne by Joseph Wambaugh
17 Dec 2012 03:37:42
A former LAPD detective sergeant – he quit when his fame began intruding on his work – Wambaugh reveals on his website that he ran out of his own material to mine for his fiction 30 years ago. He began collecting fresh stories from serving officers, and in the front of Harbour Nocturne, the author thanks 51 of them "for the terrific anecdotes and great cop talk". From the costumed street characters who hustle tourists in front of Grauman's Chinese theatre to the police officer who lets a Gypsy o... Read Full Story
Terence Donovan Fashion David Hillman
17 Dec 2012 03:35:57
Three talents led the movement – David Bailey, Brian Duffy and Terence Donovan. They were all working class and brought the reality and nuances of contemporary life to their photography, knocking down the ivory tower – all couture ball gowns, aristocratic-looking models and ladylike manners – that had dominated fashion to date.
While David Bailey is still alive and highly active in his profession today (and has published many books), Terence Donovan died in 1996, leaving a huge archive of work ... Read Full Story
Inside the Centre Ray Monk
17 Dec 2012 03:32:38
The tension between Oppenheimer's two sides – his need to be at the centre of power versus his wish to retain his conscience – lie at the heart of Ray Monk's wonderful new biography. Monk takes as his starting point Isidor Rabi's assertion that Oppenheimer's problem was "identity": that he was "a man put together of many bright shining splinters", who "never got to be an integrated personality"… "You carried on a charade with him. He lived a charade."
Oppenheimer was ill at ease with his Jewish... Read Full Story
