HILARY SPURLING Anthony Powell: Dancing to the music of time. Reviewed by Folly Gleeson
This biography of Anthony Powell is a fine examination of the creative process and the time between the two world wars. For those who have read and loved – or, as in my case, wallowed in – the 12 novels of A Dance to the Music of Time, this...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on playing patience
I’ve lately taken to playing patience – the one-handed card game known in the US and Canada as solitaire. With no skill at cards, this, along with Snap, is a game I can handle. But, as well as luck it does require vigilance, and for me, with poor eyesight and no...
The Godfather: Peter Corris on his best books of 2016
I haven’t read any books this year, but have had the great privilege of listening to 89 audiobooks narrated by superb actors. As in past years, I gave each book a mark out of 10. Listed here are the five that have most impressed me, not in order of merit but in the...
EDWARD ST AUBYN Lost for Words. Reviewed by Michael Jongen
This funny and satirical story will entertain those readers who take an interest in the politics of literary awards. Malcolm Craig, an MP who has time on his hands due to political misfortune, accepts the invitation to chair the judging of a literary award, on the...
ROBERT WAINWRIGHT Sheila: The Australian beauty who bewitched British society. Reviewed by Kylie Mason
More social history than biography, this fascinating book brings to life the glamorous years between the world wars. Born in 1895 on a property near Goulburn, New South Wales, Sheila Chisholm spent her childhood like most other Australians: cavorting outdoors, getting...EF Benson, his life and times. An appreciation by Walter Mason
This literary figure from a forgotten age retains a cult following for his charmingly sharp-eyed novels, which may even have curative powers. ‘We will pay anything for Lucia books,’ read a legendary advertisement in the Times at some point in the 1940s, placed by a...The Godfather: Peter Corris on William Boyd
A writer and his agent were having lunch in an up-market London restaurant a few years ago. The agent was paying. They started with oyster soup and moved on to Dover sole with a bottle of German Riesling. The writer, 45 or thereabouts, had published a string of...The Godfather: Peter Corris on the humour of Michael Frayn
I’m indebted to writer and publisher Michael Wilding for introducing me to Michael Frayn, whom I’d heard of but never read. He was enjoying Frayn’s 1998 novel Headlong and I’d just finished an historical novel of no distinction and was looking for something good....
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