Down at the doctor
TWO outstanding biographies. Peter Martin’s Samuel Johnson: A Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25) is worthy of its immortal subject. Johnson was a great poet, essayist, editor, critic and all round hack; he was also a great Englishman, wit, humorist, conversationalist, scholar, metropolitan and provincial. We have had many biographies, many of them worthy of their subject, and they have all shed light on this fascinating, complex, puzzling and original character. Martin draws on all the available evidence and presents a fully rounded portrait, mercifully free from off the peg psychology and flip judgements.
Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music by John Lucas (Boydell Press, £25) is a tremendously detailed biography of one of Lancashire’s greatest sons, Thomas Beecham, who exerted an enormous influence on British music making. Through his efforts standards of orchestral, singing and operatic performance improved enormously. He premiered much modern music and extended the repertory – reintroducing much by Mozart and Haydn that had nigh on disappeared from the British musical experience. His commitment and energy seemed inexhaustible. This is the most detailed and thorough biography of Beecham I know, though I’m grateful I saw and heard him so many times when I was a student. You get a free CD of Beecham rehearsals, too. And that’s a laugh!
Robert Giddings
Railway children
IT WAS more than 30 years coming down the track, but it was worth the wait. Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star (Hamish Hamilton, £20) the story of a train ride from London through Asia and back via the Trans-Siberian, is the sequel to The Great Railway Bazaar of 1975. He retraces his old steps – partly to forestall any pipsqueak rival doing so – even meeting some of the same people, but nothing is the same. Theroux is sometimes infuriating, but never boring. Vietnam, Burma and Singapore, in particular, offer dramatic food for thought while his light-hearted charge through Central Asia illustrates the crazy contrariness of the post-Soviet republics. Second choice is The Sixth Man (Quartet, £25) James McNeish’s biography of Paddy Costello, the New Zealand war hero and diplomat (and father of Mick Costello, former Morning Star journalist and industrial organiser of the CP) whose career was sacrificed to the Cold War, courtesy of the British security services: fascinating and appalling in about equal measure.
Paul Routledge
Capital bard
PETER ACKROYD writes books quicker than most of us read them. Even more remarkable, whether they’re history, fiction, poetry or philosophy, they’re all rewarding. His latest offering – The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (Chatto & Windus, £16.99) – is more immediately entertaining than most. It’s a strange mix of facts, fictions, myths and monsters. His writing is always clever and consistent whether he’s diverting Purley, defining Dickens or analysing London. Just as he did with Oscar Wilde, he seems to take over Mary Shelley’s pen, resurrecting her along with the body of Jack Keat who becomes the monster. There may not be obvious messages, but there is always an air of learning and profundity in the engaging work of our capital modern bard.
Chris Proctor
Painting it black
SARAH WISE, our most compelling social historian, brings a Victorian slum, the Old Nichol, within horrifying touch in The Blackest Streets (Jonathan Cape, £20). Arthur Jay, Anglo Catholic cleric, socialite and eugenicist and Arthur Harding, 1890s wide boy and future Mosleyite, are social history furiously live.
In McKie’s Gazeteer (Atlantic, £30) David dazzles for 644 pages: Abbeycwmweir, “a church, a pub, a stately hall” reminds him of Samuel Palmer; Blennerhasset, a model village “founded by a gentleman philanthropist” where they burned Tom Paine’s Age of Reason on the village green; Yarm, “where Middlesbrough comes when it makes its money” and Zouch, “a few fleeting moments on the A6006 westward from Melton Mowbray”.
Published in 1903, just re-read, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft by George Gissing (World’s Classics, £8) has no plot but is perfect. A small legacy takes a weary writer to a Devonshire village to luxuriate in books, walks, landscape, ideas and sudden happiness. That same year Gissing died at 46.
Edward Pearce
Smoke on the water
THE Second World War was, arguably, the most significant event of the 20th century. The struggle between fascism and democracy, an institution whose fragility is often unrecognised, was resolved at a huge cost not always appreciated by later generations. Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II by Nicholson Baker (Simon & Schuster, £20) probes diligently into the war’s origins. Read and compare with 21st century conflicts.
Tony Heath
Crisis of capitalism
THE financial crisis has prompted a wave of books on the subject. I have concentrated on a new edition of a work by the economist of the moment, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (Yale University Press, £19.99) written not by Keynes but by Hyman Minsky. I am now reading The Origin of Financial Crises (Harriman House, £16.99) by Minksy admirer George Cooper. Next on the list is The Subprime Solution: How Today’s Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do About It by Robert Shiller (Princeton University Press, £9.95).
Marlborough: England’s Fragile Genius by Richard Holmes (Harper Press, £25) was a welcome distraction over the summer. Amidst current debates over the role of Parliament, I picked up an old copy of The King’s War, a Civil War history by CV Wedgwood.
Stephen Beer
GREED is part of the human condition. Whether it’s company directors advancing flimsy justification for outrageous boardroom bonuses, or unions excusing larger-than-average pay demands, the bottom line is that people go for what they can get. John Hatcher’s The Black Death: An Intimate History (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20) shows it was ever thus. After the Medieval pestilence wiped out up to half the workforce, labourers swiftly doubled their wages from 1 1/2d a day to 3d. Butchers raised prices because more people could afford to eat meat. This is a great book about how those involved faced the most awful of adversities. And how those who survived lined their pockets on the back of it.
Nigel Nelson
OF THE many books on the slump, only The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets has Cost us our Future by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson (Bodley Head, £12.99) suggests what we can all do about it. Also recommended: Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science (Fourth Estate, £12.99).
Will Podmore
Poverty and power
TWO books – Supercapitalism by Robert Reich (Icon Books, £12.99) and Duncan Green’s From Poverty to Power (Oxfam, £15.95) – set out why the world is why it is and how we can change it. Well written and easy to read, both should inspire the left to understand why the world must change and how to do it. Big Boy Rules by Steve Fainaru (Da Capo Press, £15.99) is a brilliant exposé of state-sanctioned mercenaries in Iraq. It’s required reading – showing why Obama is right to want real change.
For light relief, the underrated but excellent storyteller Robert Goddard had another hit with his murder mystery Name to a Face (Bantam, £6.99).
Andrew Dodgshon
A farewell to arms
2008 was a year of farewells in crime fiction. Ian Rankin wrote a full stop to the career of John Rebus in Exit Music (Orion, £18.99). Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander handed the crimefighting torch to his daughter Linda, and Reginald Hill and Christopher Brookmyre teased us with the possible mortality of their long-running characters Andy Dalziel and Jack Parlabane. Among these passings, welcome two new voices: Child 44 by Tom Rob Hill (Simon & Schuster, £12.99) was excellent and The Risk of Infidelity Index by Christopher G Moore (Atlantic, £12.99) should lead to an intriguing series featuring expat lawyer Vinnie Calvino.
Peter Whittaker
Dogging Daniel
I ENJOYED Daniel Davies’ first novel The Isle Of Dogs (Serpent’s Tail, £9.99) His young hero drops out of the City rat race to go home to suburbia. Unhinged by boredom, he joins the dogging circuit, bonking strangers in twilit supermarket car parks. Davies’ state of the nation satire sails enjoyably close to the wind.
Helen Chappell
MY FAVOURITE reads this year were Enlightenment by Maureen Freely (Marion Boyars, £9.99) and What Will Survive by Joan Smith (Arcadia, £15.99). Both are political thrillers that eschew domestic themes and instead focus on global issues and the impact of real events on individual lives. They also have strong, independent women at their heart and bold, dramatic storylines.
Lucy Popescu
End of the Reich
THE concluding volume of Richard Evans’ trilogy on Nazi Germany, The Third Reich at War (Allen Lane, £30) is nothing short of an historical masterpiece. It describes, in meticulous detail and a highly readable narrative, how Hitler’s war machine led his nation to destruction. Evans’ account of the Holocaust is second only to Martin Gilbert’s seminal work.
The Hugo Young Papers (Allen Lane, £30) is a goldmine of 30 years of off-the-record and unpublished musings by the “pope of the liberal left”. There is the added attraction that Young’s observations and informal conversations with virtually every major politician were never intended for publication. Elinor Burkett’s new study of Golda Meir (Gibson Square, £17.99) must rank as the most stimulating biography of the year. Burkett describes how Israel’s ageing socialist and feminist icon unexpectedly found herself thwarting invasion by two Arab armies in 1973.
The best work of fiction goes to John Grisham’s The Appeal (Century, £18.99). This convincing tale of a megalomaniac Wall Street predator’s ability to corrupt the political and legal process confirms Grisham as one of America’s finest writers – and a man firmly of the left.
David Harounoff
Liberal democracy
DAVID MARQUAND’S Britain Since 1918 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £25) is the best political history of this country for a long time. Lucid, incisive and eloquent, it provides a liberal overview of our democracy’s evolution in the last century. Marquand’s career as journalist, academic and politician provides him with a depth and understanding that makes his book a must read on the centre left.
Robert Taylor
Broadcast news
BREAKING News by Martin Fletcher (St Martin’s Press, £11.34 on Amazon) is an extraordinary book. What starts as a boy’s own memoir of a British-born NBC TV correspondent roaming the world’s troublespots develops into a personal odyssey in which Fletcher tries to resolve his role as a passive recorder of today’s disasters with the inherited guilt of being the child of Holocaust survivors.
Ivor Gaber
Mind over matter
YOU can’t turn the feature pages in a newspaper without tripping over an article on the latest popular science book. We-Think by Charles Leadbeater (Profile, £12.99) made many interesting points, but it was science fiction which stood out for me this year. Iain Banks could probably publish his shopping list and thousands would buy it. Matter (Orbit, £18.99) was much anticipated and, while not up to his usual standards, was still a great read. But Scotland’s brightest sci-fi star is Ken McLeod who continues to produce short but thought provoking books set in the near future, such as The Execution Channel (Orbit, £17.99) and The Night Sessions (£18.99) set in the near future.
Phil Chamberlain
The Hugo awards
THE continuing biased coverage of the events in Venezuela, predictably lead by the ailing New York Times and Washington Post and often, sadly, followed by The Guardian and the BBC whose Latin American coverage is hardly any better than the Ham and High’s, makes it incumbent on any British social democrat to read Hugo! (Bodley Head, £12.99), Bart Jones’ excellent biography of President Chávez.
Hugh O’Shaughnessy
THE marvellous Savage Detectives (Picador, £8.99) by the now deceased Chilean poet and writer Roberto Bolano warns us how time can dilute the rebellious dreams of youth, bringing disappointment, under-achievement, broken loves, illness, death and sorrow; yet with a deft touch he shows us possibilities and new paths, too. In Travels With Herodotus (Penguin, £8.99) Ryszard Kapuscinski deploys a wonderful use of irony, and the stories of Herodotus, to reveal what drove him throughout a remarkable life that saw him witness almost 30 revolutions. Hugo Chávez is the most misrepresented and demonised figure in the media today, so Bart Jones’ biography Hugo! was refreshing.
Enrico Tortolano
Breaking the words
IT WAS a good year for poetry. The Broken Word by Adam Foulds (Jonathan Cape, £9), a 61 page narrative poem first published in Craig Raine’s Areté magazine, is a brilliant account of the Mau Mau rising in colonial Kenya and breathed new life into an old form. Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds (Seren, £7.99) is full of exuberant, exciting and surrealistic visions of the everyday lives we lead. And Lip (Smith/Doorstop Books, £7.95) established Catherine Smith as one of the brightest new stars in the British poetry firmament.
It was a good year for fiction, too. The Envoy by Edward Wilson (Arcadia, £11.99) is a beautifully written spy thriller set in 1950s London when the Cold War was at its chilliest and the spooks were never quite sure who was double-crossing whom. Death in Breslau by Marek Krajewski (Maclehose Press, £15.99) is an historical whodunnit with class: a fascinating portrait of a city on the Polish/German border in the 1930s when the Nazis were taking over the levers of power. And The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Maclehose Press, £7.99) is an intelligent contemporary novel about Swedish fascism which engages the head as well as the heart.
Keith Richmond
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