Category: Books
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Harold Evans on Murdoch, sub-editors, copy editors
Anyone who loves newspapers and magazines will enjoy reading My Paper Chase, the memoirs of Harold Evans, whose wife, Tina Brown, edits The Daily Beast. The son of a railwayman, he became the most famous British newspaper editor of his time. He edited the Sunday Times for more than a…
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Martin Amis on life and Kingsley Amis
Martin Amis describes seeing his father, Kingsley Amis in a dream in his autobiography, Experience. Published in 2000, five years after his father’s death, it’s one of the most intimate accounts of a father-and-son relationship that I have ever read. He writes: Why should I tell the story of my…
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Martin Amis on life and Kingsley Amis
Martin Amis (left) describes seeing his father, Kingsley Amis (below), in a dream in his autobiography, Experience. Published in 2000, five years after his father’s death, it’s one of the most intimate accounts of a father-and-son relationship that I have ever read.
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Shakespeare’s bawdy
William Shakespeare was baptized on this day in 1564 and what a life he led before he died at the age of 52 on April 23, 1616. He explored love and sex in his plays with a detailed vividness that leaves Masters and Johnson looking pretty skimpy, writes Simon Callow…
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Shakespeare: Much ado about love
It’s that day of the year when we remember William Shakespeare. Here’s a link to the most famous scene from my wife’s favourite play —– Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth in the sleepwalking scene. But give me the romantic comedies any day. Boy meets, boy gets girl, and they live…
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Auden’s September 1, 1939
If asked to name my favourite poem by WH Auden, I would probably say In Memory of WB Yeats though I like any number of his poems: The Unknown Citizen, Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love, O Tell Me the Truth about Love, Funeral Blues, Refugee Blues, Night Mail… See,…
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Indira Gandhi and Lee Kuan Yew
Singapore’s Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is compared to Indira Gandhi by the Indian journalist, Sunanda Datta-Ray, who once worked for The Straits Times. In his book, Looking East to Look West, exploring India-Singapore relations, based on his interviews with MM Lee, he writes: Lee and Indira Gandhi shared a…
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Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
The Given Day is a fiery epic set in Boston after the First World War, with a story and characters as compelling as The Godfather. Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, can describe people and scenes with the sharpness of a high-resolution camera and their feelings with the eloquence of…
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Dennis Lehane, The Given Day
The Given Day is a fiery epic set in Boston after the First World War, with a story and characters as compelling as The Godfather. Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, can describe people and scenes with the sharpness of a high-resolution camera and their feelings with the eloquence of…
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