Not so much a history as a series of snapshots, a book you can read in any order you want, and which is packed with fascinating – sometimes completely unexpected – information. The trenches and tanks and gas attacks were nothing new. But ration cards, the Zimmerman telegram and the use of carrier pigeons – …
Howards End Is On The Landing
It wasn’t the title that grabbed me so much as the sub-title: A Year of Reading from Home. (I love hearing, and reading, about what people like to read.) Ten years or so ago, Susan Hill went looking for a book, couldn’t find it, but discovered several that she’d never read. So she decided to …
God Is Not Great
I’d never read anything by Christopher Hitchens before, mainly because somebody had once written that he was the basis for the drunken journalist in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities,and that character was more than a little off-putting. Well, culpa mea. Because he can really write. Expecting a somewhat heavy read, I went through this …
The Cruel Sea
There’s a type of writer I think of as belonging to the Collar and Tie Brigade.* Their writing is clean and clear, grammatically perfect, and devoid of stylistic flourishes. (No Gerald Kersh or Harlan Ellison.) They have a story to tell and they tell it, as simply and directly as they can. Examples would include …
