‘If my story were ever to be written down truthfully from start to finish, it would amaze everyone’, wrote Henri Matisse. It is hard to believe today that Matisse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matisse and http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/artists/henri-matisse), whose exhibitions draw huge crowds worldwide, was once almost universally reviled and ridiculed. His response was neither to protest nor to retreat; he simply […]
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A fascinating account of piracy, betrayal, and raw survival on the high seas and dry land, Selkirk’s Island rediscovers the amazing tale of an eighteenth-century legend. Born a poor Scotsman, Alexander Selkirk signed with William Dampier, a pirate who was as famous for his self-promotion as for his naval success, on an ill-fated quest to
‘My mother began me one evening in 1968 on a table in the café of the town’s only cinema. One short flight of stairs away, up behind the balding red velvet of the Balcony curtain, the usherette was yawning, dandling her off torch, leaning on her elbow above the rustlings and tonguings of the back
Since the success of Brazzaville Beach (1990), William Boyd (http://www.williamboyd.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Boyd_(writer) has enjoyed a reputation as a male novelist who understands women and writes believably from a female viewpoint. Given that women hold up rather more than half the market as novel-buyers, the reputation has undoubtedly proved useful. With Restless (2006), he enters the female-friendly territory
In Michael Frayn’s (http://literature.britishcouncil.org/michael-frayn and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Frayn) novel Spies (2002) an old man returns to the scene of his seemingly ordinary suburban childhood. Stephen Wheatley is unsure of what he is seeking but, as he walks once-familiar streets he hasn’t seen in 50 years, he unfolds a story of childish games colliding cruelly with adult realities. It is
What first prompted prehistoric man, sheltering in the shadows of deep caves, to call upon the realm of the spirits? And why has belief thrived since, shaping millennia of civilizations, thousands of generations of shamans, pharaohs, Aztec priests and Mayan rulers, Jews, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims and Scientologists? As our dreams and nightmares have changed over the
An Atheist’s History of Belief by Matthew Kneale Read More »
Soho in the Fifties and London half a century later form the two interlocking time frames for Maggie O’Farrell’s (http://www.maggieofarrell.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maggie_O%27Farrell) 2010 novel. A chance meeting in a Devon Lane between a bored graduate, Alexandra Sinclair, and a flamboyant older man with a broken-down car instigate events that, decades on, will have an unprecedented effect on new parents Elina and
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In 1857 when Captain Illiam Quillian Kewley and his band of rum smugglers from the Isle of Man have most of their contraband confiscated by British Customs, they are forced to put their ship up for charter. The only takers are two eccentric Englishmen who want to embark for the other side of the globe.
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The centrepiece of this book by Alasdair Gray (http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk/ and http://www.alasdairgray.co.uk/) is the text of ‘Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer’, said to be written and published at his own expense (in 1909) by Archibald McCandless. Belying its stolid title, this tells of a student doctor’s only friendship with the equally solitary
