The fact that Alistair Campbell lacks rudimentary self-awareness increases the book’s usefulness.
Robert Service
Robert Service is a professor of Russian history at Oxford University and author of a forthcoming biography of Trotsky.
District and Circle by Seamus Heaney
I'm a patchy follower of his poetry but have always loved the tactile quality of his verse as well as the abiding sense of place - somehow, without banging a drum, he conveys the impression that however small and inconsequential the experiences in childhood may appear, they stay with all of us for the rest of our lives. He's not the most philosophical of poets but there's something about his indirect approach to big questions that is unrivalled.
Rome and Jerusalem by Martin Goodman
This is compulsive reading for any interested in the ancient world. It marvellously brings together Roman and Jewish history, showing both how much the two cultures overlapped and why it was that Jews baffled and annoyed the Romans. The scholarship is worn lightly, always the sign of an author who has confident mastery over his material. With a family home in north-east Hackney, moreover, I picked up so much information about my Hasidic neighbours.
The Blair Years by Alistair Campbell
No enthusiast for the author, I found this book unputdownable as bedside reading. Mind you, it makes the adrenalin flow. Inadvertently Campbell does the service of demonstrating what low-life calculations underpinned that gross mismanagement of foreign policy and constitutionality which led the UK into the Iraq war. The fact that Campbell lacks rudimentary self-awareness increases the book's usefulness. I loved and hated reading it.
........................................................................................................................................
Trotsky: A Biography is published by Macmillan
........................................................................................................................................
Monday, 12 October, 2009
In What I'm reading
Newsletter
Untitled Books
Your account
Register for an account and review books, comment on articles and build a list of your favourite reviews. Coming soon.
