Book review – biography
Towering extravagance
The Shard is an unnecessary building. Nobody apart from its developer asked for it to be built. Nobody was crying…
Kathleen Kennedy kicks over the traces
Kathleen Kennedy and her elder brother JFK were the grandchildren of upwardly mobile Irish Catholic immigrants. John F. Fitzgerald, ‘Honey…
Making Nietzsche New
Had you been down at Naumburg barracks early in March 1867, you might have seen a figure take a running…
The life of Thomas De Quincey: a Gothic horror story
Frances Wilson’s biography of Thomas De Quincey, the mischievous, elusive ‘Pope of Opium’, makes for addictive reading, says Hermione Eyre
George Bell: witness to the truth
George Bell (1883–1958) was, in many respects, a typical Anglican prelate of his era. He went to Westminster and Christ…
Laurence Oliphant: oddest of Victorian oddballs
As an erstwhile obituarist, I pity the poor hack who had to write up the life of Laurence Oliphant —…
Close encounters on the starship Enterprise
For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…
David Astor: the saintly, tormented man who remade the Observer
Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…
Love, Robert Lowell and poetic licence
The conceit of this book — the author’s third on Robert Lowell — is strong, although its execution is less…
When Groucho Marx lectured T.S. Eliot
Groucho Marx was delighted when he heard that the script for one of his old Vaudeville routines was being reprinted…
Benjamin Franklin: from man about town to man on the run
Just who was Benjamin Franklin? Apart, that is, from journalist, statesman, diplomat, founding father of the United States, inventor of…
Phil Lynott, from Dublin teenager to rock'n'roll burnout
It’s often said that there are only seven basic plots in literature. When it comes to biographies of rock stars…
Was Klaus Mann all Thomas Mann's fault?
Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906…
What’s next for Comrade Corbyn?
‘Ah, Jeremy,’ remarked Tony Blair at a smart dinner party in Islington not long before he became prime minister, ‘he…
Thin air and frayed tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
David Litvinoff: queeny aesthete or street-hustling procurer?
Even David Litvinoff’s surname was a concoction. It was really Levy. Wanting something ‘more romantic’, he appropriated that of his…
Catullus, Clodia and the pangs of despised love
Reading Daisy Dunn’s ambitious first book, a biography of the salty (in more ways than one) Roman poet Catullus, it…
Inside the mind of a murderer
For one week in July 2010, the aspiring spree killer Raoul Moat was the only news. ‘Aspiring’ because he didn’t…
Bernard Buffet: painter and poser
Bernard Buffet was no one’s idea of a great painter. Except, that is, Pierre Bergé and Nick Foulkes. Bergé was…
Robert Nairac: brave to a fault
Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted…
Take up and read Augustine’s Confessions
I usually throw away dust jackets but Robin Lane Fox chose his for a reason. He originally encountered Augustine of…
Brian Hodgson finds his vocation in Kathmandu
It started as a ‘shoke’ — the Anglo-Indian slang word for ‘hobby’. Bored and lonely in Kathmandu, the young Assistant…
Homage to awesome Welles on his centenary
One day in May 1948 in the Frascati hills southeast of Rome, Orson Welles took his new secretary, Rita Ribolla,…
Samuel Palmer: from long-haired mystic to High Church Tory
In his youth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) painted like a Romantic poet. The moonlit field of ‘The Harvest Moon’ (1831–32) glows…
Charles Williams: sadist or Rosicrucian saint?
Charles Williams was a bad writer, but a very interesting one. Most famous bad writers have to settle, like Sidney…
