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Death in Belgravia

Rosemary Hill, 5 February 2015

A Different Class of Murder: The Story of Lord Lucan 
by Laura Thompson.
Head of Zeus, 422 pp., £20, November 2014, 978 1 78185 536 2
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... early 1960s London. Maverick, ambitious and something of a fantasist, he was a co-owner with Peter Cook of Private Eye and the Establishment Club in Soho. He was also a habitué of John Aspinall’s gambling club, the Clermont, which became the fulcrum of Lucan’s life after he left the bank. When Lucan disappeared the ‘Clermont set’ loomed large in the ...

Whose Egypt?

Adam Shatz, 5 January 2012

... social problems. Like its friends in Tel Aviv, the Obama administration is worried that the Camp David treaty will be nullified if the Brothers gain the upper hand, and that Egypt will go the way of Iran in 1979, a fear exacerbated by the storming of the Israeli Embassy in September. But the Brothers denounced the attack on the embassy and have said they ...

Whisky and Soda Man

Thomas Jones: J.G. Ballard, 10 April 2008

Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton – An Autobiography 
by J.G. Ballard.
Fourth Estate, 278 pp., £14.99, February 2008, 978 0 00 727072 9
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... of Shanghai’s millions of Chinese inhabitants. Ballard’s attempts to befriend the son of the cook, a boy his age, got nowhere. But still, he could gaze out of the window of his parents’ big American car as the chauffeur drove him and his nanny through the city, marvelling at the ‘bright but bloody kaleidoscope’ outside: ‘the prosperous Chinese ...

Why Sakhalin?

Joseph Frank: Charting Chekhov’s career, 17 February 2005

Chekhov: Scenes from a Life 
by Rosamund Bartlett.
Free Press, 395 pp., £20, July 2004, 0 7432 3074 4
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Anton Chekhov: A Life in Letters 
translated by Rosamund Bartlett and Anthony Phillips.
Penguin, 552 pp., £12.99, June 2004, 0 14 044922 1
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... later, in a letter reproaching his older brother Alexander for his behaviour to his wife and their cook, he wrote: ‘Despotism and lies also destroyed our own childhood, so much so that we become sick and fearful when we remember it.’ Despite such memories, Chekhov’s behaviour towards his father and mother (whom he supported first in part and then ...

Didn’t we agree to share?

Sheila Heti: ‘The First Wife’, 13 July 2017

The First Wife 
by Paulina Chiziane, translated by David Brookshaw.
Archipelago, 250 pp., £14.99, August 2016, 978 0 914671 48 0
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... assembly of the king’s wives – where we would discuss the division of chores, decide who would cook the sovereign’s morning pap, who would prepare his baths and rub his feet, cut his nails, massage his back, shave him, comb him, and provide other cares. We would take part in drawing up His Majesty’s matrimonial rotation, which consisted of a night for ...

During Her Majesty’s Pleasure

Ronan Bennett, 20 February 1997

... did not long survive her son’s birth, and soon afterwards Ms Woolvine met and married David McCluskie, a plasterer and bricklayer. Terry took McCluskie’s name, though this was never regularised. The family moved to London after the strike at Cammell-Laird, when David McCluskie was finding work hard to come ...

Infisal! Infisal! Infisal!

Jonathan Littell: A Journey in South Sudan, 30 June 2011

... while trying to catch the mangoes that others toss down from the high branches; their parents cook, chat, or sleep; further on, worried aid workers hold ad hoc meetings near their white SUVs, soldiers move between their trucks or around the T-72 tanks loaded on a barge, workers unload crates of Coke or bottled water, transported from Khartoum.Malakal, the ...

His Own Sort of Outsider

Philip Clark: Tippett’s Knack, 16 July 2020

Michael Tippett: The Biography 
by Oliver Soden.
Weidenfeld, 750 pp., £25, April 2019, 978 1 4746 0602 8
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... tiny Suffolk village of Wetherden from St Briavels to Rosemary Cottage. The Tippetts had a live-in cook, parlourmaid and governess, but Isabel made sure her boys were aware that others weren’t so fortunate. During trips to London, Michael and his brother, Peter, helped serve food in East End soup kitchens and were taken along to suffragist meetings. Tippett ...

His Bonnet Akimbo

Patrick Wright: Hamish Henderson, 3 November 2011

Hamish Henderson: A Biography. Vol. I: The Making of the Poet (1919-53) 
by Timothy Neat.
Polygon, 416 pp., £14.99, May 2009, 978 1 84697 132 7
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Hamish Henderson: A Biography. Vol. II: Poetry Becomes People (1954-2002) 
by Timothy Neat.
Polygon, 395 pp., £25, November 2009, 978 1 84697 063 4
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... last travelling Highland dance teachers’. Eventually, Henderson’s mother took a position as a cook-housekeeper in a large house near Yeovil: a part of Somerset still rich in traditional song. She managed to send Hamish to board at a small prep school on the coast near Teignmouth, where he impressed the headmaster, who became his guardian after his mother ...

Something for Theresa May to think about

John Barrell: The Bow Street Runners, 7 June 2012

The First English Detectives: The Bow Street Runners and the Policing of London, 1750-1840 
by J.M. Beattie.
Oxford, 272 pp., £65, February 2012, 978 0 19 969516 4
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... evidence to save his neck. Others came from thoroughly peaceable trades: a hatter, a pastry-cook, a button-maker, a saddler and a shoemaker all signed up in the course of the next few decades. The court at Bow Street was on the ground floor of the Fieldings’ house and across the road from the Brown Bear, which became, as Beattie puts it, ‘a lock-up ...

Living with Monsters

Ferdinand Mount: PMs v. the Media, 22 April 2010

Where Power Lies: Prime Ministers v. the Media 
by Lance Price.
Simon & Schuster, 498 pp., £20, February 2010, 978 1 84737 253 6
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... mistress’. I am not sure whether this was better or worse than Campbell’s ultimatum to Robin Cook that he must choose between his wife and his mistress. In any event, Clark resigned soon afterwards, complaining that ‘news management’ had become ‘news invention’. Even the young Queen Elizabeth was moved to remark to her press secretary: ‘I think ...

Musical Chairs with Ribbentrop

Bee Wilson: Nancy Astor, 20 December 2012

Nancy: The Story of Lady Astor 
by Adrian Fort.
Cape, 378 pp., £25, October 2012, 978 0 224 09016 2
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... a moccasin snake with her riding crop). The Langhorne family’s meals were prepared by a Negro cook and butler. ‘Don’t kill him, Dab,’ Nancy’s mother cajoled, to save the butler from an act of violence when he tripped one day while carrying a tureen of oyster stew. Chillie never lost his prejudice against the Damyankees or his conviction that work ...

Skating Charm

James Wolcott: Kenneth Tynan, 13 December 2001

The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan 
edited by John Lahr.
Bloomsbury, 439 pp., £25, October 2001, 0 7475 5418 8
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... on him. The front cover of Tynan’s Letters, published in 1994, features a portrait taken by David Bailey, itself a sign of pop status. The front cover of The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan is a close up of its subject inhaling, eyes shut, fingers splayed; its back cover, three shots of him in different stages of smoking – an action-sequence of sorts. How ...

Resurrection Man

Danny Karlin: Browning and His Readers, 23 May 2002

The Ring and the Book 
by Robert Browning, edited by Richard Altick and Thomas Collins.
Broadview, 700 pp., £12.99, August 2001, 1 55111 372 4
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The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. Vol. VIII: The Ring and the Book, Books V-VIII 
edited by Stefan Hawlin and Tim Burnett.
Oxford, £75, February 2001, 0 19 818647 9
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... culture, and by its elaborate literary allusiveness. The earliest book-length commentary, by A.K. Cook (1920), is still indispensable, though a great deal of historical information has emerged subsequently; much of this is summarised by Hawlin and Burnett, but even they do not incorporate the latest findings in the Arezzo archives, where Michael Meredith, the ...

In Clover

Laleh Khalili: What does McKinsey do?, 15 December 2022

When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm 
by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe.
Bodley Head, 354 pp., £20, October 2022, 978 1 84792 625 8
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... without any passport or visa checks. One hundred and thirty chefs had been flown in from India to cook ‘strictly vegetarian’ Chinese, Greek, Italian, Indian, Mexican, South African and Thai food. Personal servants were allocated to the most important guests. South African attendees included President Zuma’s daughter Duduzile, his son Duduzane ...

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