It is, alas, Christmas
again, which means that the newspapers, at least those which contain words, are
full of people telling you which books they have enjoyed most this year. So I
thought I would pitch in.
I have read far more books
on politics this year than in any year since I started recording what I read.
By far the finest is the re-issue of Gyles Brandreth’s parliamentary diaries Breaking the Code. These are the best
political diaries I have read since Chris Mullin’s, and are far funnier.
Whilst on the subject of
political diaries, the greatest hits of Tony Benn, who left us earlier this
year, has been published (The Best of
Benn). Ruth Winstone has done an excellent job in editing down the tens of
thousands of diary entries, essays, interviews and speeches given by Benn over
a truly remarkable life and career.
Other political books I
have particularly enjoyed this year include Michael Jago’s Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister and Dennis Skinner’s Sailing Close to the Wind. The Establishment by Owen Jones and Private Island by James Meek made me angry
at the elitist clique that runs our lives and has sold us out, and despair at
the mountain we must climb to take control. In a case of missing the boat, I
cannot recommend Gordon Brown’s My Scotland,
Our Britain highly enough. Like his earlier book on the economy, it was
thoughtful and outlines the true, patriotic reason for Scotland remaining in
the Union and why we should all be so thankful that it did.
Away from politics, this
year marked the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War. To mark this I have
read a good deal on the War. I write this having just finished re-reading Sebastian
Faulks’ masterpiece Birdsong, still
the most moving First World War novel I have ever read. I have also particularly
enjoyed The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav
Hašek, the story of the overly patriotic Švejk and his bumbling attempts to reach the front after he is called up
to the Austro-Hungarian Army. A classic too little read in this country.
An interesting work on the
contribution made by the public schools to the war effort is Anthony Seldon’s
book Public Schools and the Great War, it
catalogues the horrific losses suffered by junior officers on the Western Front
as they led their platoons over the top. One in five former public school boys
who went to the Front died there, a higher ratio than any other demographic
group. Seldon’s book, as with all his works, is well researched and detailed
and challenges the ‘lions led by donkeys’ consensus far more effectively than
Michael Gove’s bizarre attacks on Blackadder.
If first hand accounts of
the war are more your line of thing then your cannot do better than to reach
for Robert Graves autobiography Good-Bye
To All That, it may well be the most remarkable memoir I have ever read.
Penguin has re-released the original 1929 edition, which is rawer, and what I
believe the critics call grittier, than the comparatively restrained, somewhat
anodyne later versions.
Two books I was grateful
for reading this year were Italio Calvino’s The
Baron in the Trees and Tim Parks’ Italian
Ways. The former lifted me from a period of melancholy in the spring whilst
the latter’s warm and paternal reminisces of journeys on the Italian Railways
distracted me greatly and cheered me as we drove around a small corner of that
beautiful country in the late summer.
In fiction, The Long Road to the Deep North was a
worthy winner of the Mann Booker Prize and a deeply moving story the of human
suffering involved in the building of the death railway in Burma during the
dark days of World War Two. For my money How
to be Both by Ali Smith was the best of the shortlist, an all to rare
thing, a novel which makes you see the world a little differently. My other
favourite novel I have read this year is The
Children Act by Ian McEwan, how it escaped the Booker shortlist I don’t
know. For my money it is the best novel McEwan has done for several years and
ranks alongside Amsterdam as one of
his finest works.
As the New Year approaches
I am hoping to finish two books that have dogged me this year, the first is Capital in the Twenty-First Century by
the French economist Thomas Piketty and the other is Absolute Recoil by Slovenian philosopher Slavoj žižek both are endlessly fascinating
and both are important books but both seem to have back covers which retreat
from you.
I also look forward to reading
the second volume of Alan Johnson’s autobiography, Please, Mister Postman. The first volume, This Boy, sits half-read on my bedside table and volume two awaits as
my reward for finishing volume one.
In fiction, and in
continuance of my marking the war, my eye has been caught by Parades End, and All Quiet on the Western Front, both of which have graced by
shelves for a number of years now but neither of which I have read.
I also await with anticipation
the memoirs of Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Osborne. I hope that the latter part
of next year will find them suitably unemployed and at liberty to start
drafting.
The book everyone is
raving about is The English and their
History by Robert Tombs, I
wouldn’t resent finding that in my stocking on Christmas morning.
Fiction
The Baron in the Trees, - Italio Calvino, (Harcourt) - http://tinyurl.com/pxfxx8m
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/obnzc86
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/obnzc86
Long Road to the Deep North – Richard Flanagan, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/lv3d6ws
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/m4asg5h
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/lfl7uau
The Children Act – Ian McEwan, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/lhebmwh
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/kzjek92
How to be Both – Ali Smith, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/kc8vy6o
Non-Fiction
The Best of Benn – Tony Benn, Ruth Winstone (ed.), (Cornerstone) - http://tinyurl.com/npkjrz2
Breaking the Code – Gyles Brandreth, (Biteback) - http://tinyurl.com/n8gt3ad
My Scotland, Our Britain – Gordon Brown,
(Bantam Press) - http://tinyurl.com/pnnz3nj
Good-Bye To All That – Robert Graves, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/qfymxcq
Clement Attlee: The Inevitable Prime Minister – Michael Jago, (Biteback) - http://tinyurl.com/lw7j3vl
Please, Mr Postman – Alan Johnson, (Transworld) - http://tinyurl.com/kxjcwh2
This Boy – Aland Johnson, (Transworld) - http://tinyurl.com/k7cbnuv
The Establishment – Owen Jones, (Allen Lane) - http://tinyurl.com/pmlp4do
Private Island – James Meet, (Verso) - http://tinyurl.com/lroc486
Italian Ways - Tim Parks, (Vintage) - http://tinyurl.com/oa98kjc
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, (Harvard) - http://tinyurl.com/le4p8ak
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty, (Harvard) - http://tinyurl.com/le4p8ak
Public Schools and the Great War – Anthony Seldon, (Pen and Sword Books) - http://tinyurl.com/kxh2erm
Sailing Close to the Wind – Dennis Skinner, (Quercus) - http://tinyurl.com/kaxngan
The English and their History – Robert Tombs, (Penguin) - http://tinyurl.com/mcv9kpf
Absolute Recoil – Slavoj žižek, (Verso) - http://tinyurl.com/pkhw5gj
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