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Borstal Boy by Brendan Behan |
Absolutely not the sort of book I normally read, but I casually picked it up and could hardly put it down. Behan, famous for his 1950s pro-IRA play, The Hostage, was sent over to Liverpool in 1942 to blow something up and was arrested on landing. Being only 16 he was sent to a Borstal and this fluent account of his not altogether unpleasant experience in various institutions is quite fascinating.
(bwl 22 February 2004) |
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Churchill by Roy Jenkins |
It may seem superfluous to draw attention to a book which received all the hype Macmillan could give it last year, but this book is indeed outstanding and there are those who judge it to be better than the same author's 'Gladstone'. Though running to a massive 1000 pages the pace seldom flags and Jenkins' own experience of office is used helpfully yet with admirable restraint.
(bwl 12 January 2002) |
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Eric Gill by Fiona MacCarthy |
On publication in 1989 this book was celebrated chiefly for its exposé of Gill's outrageous private life. But MacCarthy is a perspicacious authority on modern design and the book is a wonderful analysis of the 'integrationist' principles which informed Gill's development from calligrapher to stone-carver, including his type-face designs which Stanley Morrison, no less, judged to include the finest capitals (Perpetua titling) designed since the sixteenth century. A long book - challenging but never dull.
(bwl 43 December 2007) |
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Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel |
Essentially a biography of the great man himself and his struggle with the Vatican on one of the biggest issues of the seventeenth century, scientific observation versus the literal truth of the Bible. But the tale is beautifully and imaginatively written around an archive of letters from his intelligent nun-daughter, Maria Celeste, who comments not only on these great affairs of state but also on the details of the family's domestic life in Tuscany.
(bwl 7 February 2001) |
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Gerard Manley Hopkins - A Life by Paddy Kitchen |
As Hopkins rises up the poets' ranking - he recently overtook Tennyson in one listing - it is interesting to see how defensive his fans remained just twenty years ago. Kitchen is remarkably sure-footed in handling the complex verse, though less so in such areas as the Jesuit ethos and the poet's psycho-sexual constitution. The prologue on the Oxford Movement is truly excellent and at last I understand why The Month rejected The Wreck of the Deutschland.
(bwl 45 April 2008) |
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Let's Talk of Graves, of Worms and Epitaphs by Robert Player |
An historical novel, one of the few in which the central character becomes Pope, this will appeal to anyone who has some knowledge of XIX century English Catholic History in general and of Cardinal Manning in particular. Up to a certain point it is accurately based on that cardinal's life but thereafter it is the wildest and most scandalous fantasy, leading to what Manning would have loved, but never achieved, election to succeed Pio Nono.
(bwl 20 September 2003) |
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Period Piece by Gwen Raverat |
A perceptive and extraordinarily amusing recollection of her Edwardian childhood in Cambridge by Charles Darwin's granddaughter. Gwen's instinctive rebellion against the absurdity of middle-class social conventions of the day - particularly for girls - was confirmed at her Belgian finishing school where a fast new friend whose mother 'had short hair and smoked cigarettes' took her to a den and explained that conforming was no longer the done thing. Probably out of print - try a library.
(bwl 8 April 2001) |
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Reformation - Europe's House Divided by D MacCulloch |
Religions, like nations, tend to invent their own histories. It is thus refreshing to have this new, even-handed, thoroughly researched and apparently impartial account of that extraordinary upheaval of Western Christendom which divided Europe for 400 years. Motives are exposed, myths are exploded. News to me that Spain under the Inquisition had fewer executions for religious deviance than any other nation. And at last I begin to understand the doctrine of predestination.
(bwl 24 June 2004) |
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Samuel Pepys - The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin |
A lively, well researched biography. Many who know the Diary, full or abridged, forget that it only starts in January 1660, by which time Pepys, like most others in Whitehall, was prudently turning his coat Royalist. Claire Tomalin pieces together the largely undocumented pre-Diary years both of Pepys' life and the nation's politics, including his approving presence at the king's execution, and his post-Diary years dogged by accusations of crypto-Catholicism. Recommended.
(bwl 34 April 2006) |
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Slender Thread - The Origins and Development of the English Benedictine mission at Bungay, 1657-2007 by Edward Crouzet |
Seldom does a book so literally parochial as the history of a parish deserve notice beyond its own niche market, but St Edmund's, Bungay, claims to spring from the oldest Catholic mission in eastern England and its 350 year existence reflects the social and religious development of the country. Exceptionally, therefore, it may appeal also to the general reader. Beautifully illustrated and fluently written, this short work of 128 pages is a little gem.
(bwl 39 April 2007) |
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The Lunar Men - The Friends who made the future - 1730 - 1830 by Jenny Uglow |
A fascinating, readable and authoritative history of eighteenth century inventions. The great pioneers of the day, most notably Matthew Bolton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) dined together each Full Moon to exchange ideas and conduct experiments. The crucial developments, such as steam power, are covered with impressive authority but Jenny Uglow also enriches the story with a woman's eye on the family and social conditions of the day.
(bwl 18 April 2003) |
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