Never Say Die
Everyman, by Philip Roth, Jonathan Cape, 192 pp, £10, ISBN: 0224078690 Philip Roth once claimed, in his collection of reflective and self-evaluating essays Reading Myself and Others (1975), that his critics saw him as an “irresponsible, conscienceless, unserious” writer, bereft of morals and seeking merely to outrage and shock ‑ a Howard Stern of the literary scene. […]
Angel of the North
In the 1970s, the young Christopher Robbins was admitted into the world of octogenarian film producer Brian Desmond Hurst, an unusual place, made up of eccentric neighbours, theatre folk, young men of religious convictions, aristocrats, policemen, blackmailers, sly procurers, feral rent boys and assorted waifs and strays.
Man of Constant Sorrow
Brian Lynch’s subtle first novel, The Winner of Sorrow, is based on the life of William Cowper, a hugely acclaimed poet in late eighteenth century England whose work has gone into neglect in the last hundred years.
Among the Believers
The War for Muslim Minds, by Gilles Kepel, Harvard University Press, £10.95, ISBN: 067401992X In February 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt, returning from the Yalta conference where he, Churchill and Stalin had signed off on their agreement on the shape of post-war Europe, stopped off in the Middle East for another meeting which was to have […]
A Sentimental Dissenter
Crusoe’s Secret: The Aesthetics of Dissent, by Tom Paulin, Faber, 360 pp, £20, ISBN: 0571221157 While bare biographical facts offer no guaranteed entry into the core of a writer’s creative concerns, the circumstances of Tom Paulin’s upbringing situate him at an interesting cultural and historical intersection. Born in Leeds in 1949, he grew up in […]
Righteous Renegade
Arrow in the Blue, by Arthur Koestler, Vintage, 416 pp, £9.99, ISBN: 0099490676 The Invisible Writing, by Arthur Koestler, Vintage, 528 pp, £9.99, ISBN: 0099490684 Darkness At Noon, by Arthur Koestler, Vintage, 224 pp, £6.99, ISBN: 0099424916 L’Homme Sans Concessions: Arthur Koestler et son siècle, by Michel Laval, Calmann-Lévy, 706 pp, €25, ISBN: 2702135668 On […]
The Politics of Assimilation
Recently published books referred to in this article: Evangelicals and Catholics in 19th century Ireland, James H Murphy editor, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2005, ISBN: 1851829172 Grattan’s Failure, Danny Mansergh, Irish Academic Press, Dublin 2005, ISBN: 0716528150 The Bible War in Ireland, Irene Whelan, Lilliput Press, Dublin 2005, ISBN: 1843510049 The Church Of Ireland in […]