Off the hook and into the gutter

Ian Aitken, 7 December 1989

Sunrise: The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Best-Selling Soaraway ‘Sun’ 
by Larry Lamb.
Macmillan, 260 pp., £7.99, November 1989, 0 333 51070 4
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“... the Times, and nothing was ever printed which he thought unfair. He hints strongly that matters may not have been quite so squeaky-clean since he ceased to be editor, and even expresses a few doubts (more of this anon) about the way things are now going. But the idea that he and ‘Rupe’ started the slide towards perdition is dismissed as the jealousy of ...”

What time is it?

Michael Wood, 16 February 1989

Dreams of Roses and Fire 
by Eyvind Johnson, translated by Erik Friis.
Dedalus, 384 pp., £11.95, December 1988, 0 946626 40 5
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Women in a River Landscape 
by Heinrich Böll, translated by David McLintock.
Secker, 208 pp., £10.95, February 1989, 0 436 05460 4
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The Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman 
by Aldo Busi, translated by Raymond Rosenthal.
Faber, 430 pp., £12.95, January 1989, 0 571 14657 0
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“... that he has brought the devils to Loudun, at least metaphorically, in rousing passions which he may not share but which he is pleased to have roused. But he hasn’t. He is not a sorcerer, only a man not trying to be an angel, and it is this acknowledgement which allows him to suffer and die with impeccable courage, accepting none of the charges against him ...”

Dazzling Philosophy

Michael Hofmann, 15 August 1991

Seeing things 
by Seamus Heaney.
Faber, 113 pp., £12.99, June 1991, 0 571 14468 3
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“... Jarrell set it out like this at the end of his essay on Stevens: ‘A man who is a good poet at 40 may turn out to be a good poet at 60; but he is more likely to have stopped writing poems, to be doing exercises in his own manner, or to have reverted to whatever commonplaces were popular when he was young. A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of ...”

Silly Willy

Jonathan Bate, 25 April 1991

William Blake: His Life 
by James King.
Weidenfeld, 263 pp., £25, March 1991, 0 297 81160 6
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“... to say the least – especially since the Blake of the Visions of the Daughters of Albion may justifiably be claimed as a sister to Mary Wollstonecraft in the struggle to vindicate the rights of woman. And, most alarmingly in a book that advertises itself as a guide to the poetry as well as the life, it completely misses the point of the poem, which ...”

The point of it all

Asa Briggs, 25 April 1991

The Pencil: A History 
by Henry Petroski.
Faber, 434 pp., £14.99, November 1990, 0 571 16182 0
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“... economies’. ‘The magic of the price system gets thousands of people to co-operate so that we may buy a pencil for a trifling sum.’ It was calculated in the 1950s that it would cost a do-it-yourself addict about fifty dollars to make a single wood-cased pencil. As late as 1771, at the beginning of the decade of Smith’s Wealth of Nations and of James ...”

Knowing the Gulf

Victor Mallet, 22 November 1990

“... the career of Saddam Hussein and the blunders of the Western countries which armed him, but they may have difficulty analysing the long-term effects of the invasion of Kuwait on 2 August on the Arab Gulf states. The ruling families seem no more inclined than before to open the door to real democratisation, whatever the pressures from their domestic critics ...”

Where Colombia screwed up

Roger Garfitt, 13 June 1991

“... that what Colombia needs is not new laws but the will to apply them. There are signs that the will may be developing. Extensive frauds have been uncovered in the social security system, and in the public services of Colombia’s main port, Barranquilla. The newspapers are exposing corruption with more determination than they have shown for a long time. Even ...”

Diary

W.G. Runciman: UK plc v. the Swedes, 22 November 1990

“... fact, the people on whom this sort of thing is most unfair are the top executive directors. They may benefit from stock options, but they are not as a rule major shareholders. Their careers are likely to suffer whether they stay or leave, since if they stay they risk finding themselves taking orders from people they neither like nor, more ...”

Café No Problem

Victor Mallet, 28 May 1992

The Tragedy of Cambodian History: Politics, War and Revolution since 1945 
by David Chandler.
Yale, 396 pp., £25, February 1992, 0 300 04919 6
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“... the United Nations as it attempts to bring peace to the country and to prepare for elections by May next year. The key to success is not the questionable commitment of the outside world to the democratisation of Cambodia, however worthy the efforts of the UN and the hundred or so charities already working there, but the determination – also questionable ...”

Bare feet and a root of fennel

John Bayley, 11 June 1992

Strong Representations: Narrative and Circumstantial Evidence in England 
by Alexander Welsh.
Johns Hopkins, 262 pp., £21.50, April 1992, 0 8018 4271 9
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“... villain Guido, allows his thoughts to stray to the supper which he hopes to be eating that night. May Gigia have remembered, nothing stings Fried liver out of its monotony Of richness like a root of fennel, chopped Fine with the parsley. Like Crusoe’s footprint, the lawyer’s liver is the kind of fact which enriches narrative and makes for the ...”

Palimpsest History

Jonathan Coe, 11 June 1992

Ulverton 
by Adam Thorpe.
Secker, 382 pp., £14.99, May 1992, 0 436 52074 5
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Kicking 
by Leslie Dick.
Secker, 244 pp., £13.99, May 1992, 0 436 20011 2
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Frankie Styne and the Silver Man 
by Kathy Page.
Methuen, 233 pp., £13.99, April 1992, 0 413 66590 9
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“... of writers; whose work is, above all, thoroughly (and enviably) internationalised, this may be because we have so far lacked a really distinguished English entry in the field. We have been dogged, perhaps, by an assumption that English history and the English landscape do not in themselves offer a broad enough canvas (rather in the way that whole ...”

Red Spain

Hugh Thomas, 9 April 1992

The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counter-Revolution 
by Burnett Bolloten.
Harvester, 1074 pp., £50, April 1991, 0 7450 0763 5
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“... nearly fifty years writing this book, and died before this final edition appeared. Whatever one may think of the result, the author’s dedication is awe-inspiring. Bolloten went to Spain during the Civil War as correspondent of the United Press. He began collecting newspapers, propaganda hand-outs, leaflets, booklets. As he admits, he was at that time ...”

Missing Elements

Rosalind Mitchison, 14 May 1992

Strategic Women: How do they manage in Scotland? 
by Elizabeth Gerver and Lesley Hart.
Aberdeen University Press, 216 pp., £9.95, June 1991, 0 08 037741 6
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A Guid Cause: The Women’s Suffrage Movement in Scotland 
by Leah Leneman.
Aberdeen University Press, 304 pp., £11.95, June 1991, 0 08 041201 7
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Marriage and Property: Women and Marital Customs in History 
edited by Elizabeth Craik.
Aberdeen University Press, 192 pp., £6.95, June 1991, 9780080412054
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A Woman’s Claim of Right in Scotland 
Polygon, 142 pp., £7.95, August 1991, 0 7486 6103 4Show More
Nationalism in the Nineties 
edited by Tom Gallagher.
Polygon, 192 pp., £7.95, August 1991, 0 7486 6098 4
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Cultural Weapons: Scotland and Survival in a New Europe 
by Christopher Harvie.
Polygon, 119 pp., £7.95, March 1992, 0 7486 6122 0
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Literature and Nationalism 
edited by Vincent Newey and Ann Thompson.
Liverpool, 286 pp., £27.50, June 1991, 0 85323 057 9
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The Invention of Scotland: The Stuart Myth of the Scottish Identity, 1638 to the present 
by Murray Pittock.
Routledge, 198 pp., £30, September 1991, 0 415 05586 5
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Scotland: A New History 
by Michael Lynch.
Century, 499 pp., £18.99, August 1991, 0 7126 3413 4
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“... and advertisements for financial services. Even building societies have had to accept that they may hold mortgages. But there is still some exclusion of women’s activities from public acknowledgment. A woman who cares for other people’s children contributes to ‘national income’; one who cares for her own does not. When a man marries his housekeeper ...”

Locke rules

Ian Hacking, 21 November 1991

Locke. Vol. I: Epistemology 
by Michael Ayers.
Routledge, 341 pp., £90, September 1991, 0 415 06406 6
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Locke. Vol. II: Ontology 
by Michael Ayers.
Routledge, 341 pp., £90, September 1991, 0 415 06407 4
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“... but after the Revolution Locke faded from sight across the Channel. At home, however his fortunes may have gone up or down, the topics that he discussed came to constitute philosophy. Locke was no sceptic, in the philosopher’s sense of that word, but he surely was sceptical. English-language philosophy has been sceptical ever since. Locke set the ...”
Zinky Boys: The Record of a Lost Soviet Generation 
by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Julia Whitby and Robin Whitby.
Chatto, 192 pp., £9.99, January 1992, 0 7011 3838 6
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“... The logic of the dissolution will be the appearance of separate armies: and these armies may not just be separate, but warring. Already, Armenia and Azerbaijan are essentially at war, and neighbouring Turkey has protested about the creation of two national armies out of local units of the former Soviet Army. Conflict is now likely throughout the ...”