Tag: London

The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz (1973): Russell Hoban

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© John Carey

★★★

I can’t remember exactly why I bought this book. Surely it wasn’t just because there was a lion on the cover? I’d never heard of Russell Hoban, and knew nothing about the story; and yet here it is, on my shelf. It has turned out to be a thought-provoking, if somewhat mystifying read: the first half full of poignant comments on belonging, self-direction and the relationship between fathers and sons; the second half verging on hallucinogenic self-indulgence. Realising that it was first published in 1973, I wondered if parts might have made more sense if I’d been smoking something not entirely legal. And yet there’s one irresistible aspect: it’s inspired by the magnificent Lion Hunt reliefs at the British Museum.

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Fingersmith (2002): Sarah Waters

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★★★★

As the kind of person who likes to read the book before seeing the film, I was keen to read Fingersmith before the related Korean period drama The Handmaiden comes out on DVD. I’d held off reading it so far because it was the only Sarah Waters novel I hadn’t read and I was saving it as a treat. She’s a magnificent creator of character, atmosphere and dramatic tension, and all those qualities are present and correct in this dark, unexpectedly labyrinthine tale of secrets, schemes and lies in Victorian England.

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The Unseeing (2016): Anna Mazzola

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★★★

Edmund Fleetwood has an unfortunate handicap for a man who wants to make his name as a criminal lawyer. He has principles. When the Home Secretary asks him to review the Edgeware Road murder case, in which a woman is liable to hang for concealing a murder, Edmund finds himself becoming deeply emotionally involved in what he believes to be a fundamental miscarriage of justice. Based on a real murder committed in 1836, Anna Mazzola’s debut novel sets the facts of the case within a tantalising web of secrets.

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The House at Bishopsgate (2017): Katie Hickman

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© Neil Bennett

★★★★

The Pindar Trilogy: Book III

I only realised that this novel was the third part of a trilogy after I had finished it, which goes to show that it reads perfectly well as a standalone book. In fact, I’m delighted to discover this because The House at Bishopsgate has left me itching to know more about the characters’ exotic histories. This is the concluding part of a story begun in The Aviary Gate and continued in The Pindar Diamond, neither of which I’ve yet read, but watch this space, as they might make an appearance soon. Hickman’s tale of intrigue, secrets, lost love and scheming ambition makes for an addictive brew.

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The Scandal of the Season (2007): Sophie Gee

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★★★

Hands up, anyone else who hasn’t read Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock? Not just me then. Thank heavens. Mind you, you don’t really need to have read it in order to enjoy this fictionalised account of its creation. Gee brings late Stuart London to life in all its snobbish splendour: here are the coffee houses, the levees and masquerades, the self-obsessed glittering mass of the nobility and the hungry throng of writers snapping at their heels. One of these, hungrier and more ambitious than the rest, is a young Catholic poet named Alexander Pope, who has come to London hoping to make his name.

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The Wicked Boy (2016): Kate Summerscale

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★★★½

The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

This is the third book I’ve read by Kate Summerscale, after Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace and the excellent Suspicions of Mr Whicher, which I haven’t yet got round to posting about. Like her earlier books, it is a vivid recreation of 19th-century history based on dramatic cases heard in the Victorian courts and reported in the press and, like Mr Whicher, it focuses in on a horrific act of murder. Unlike Mr Whicher, however, this is not a whodunnit. The ‘who’ is clearly and frankly admitted from the very beginning. Summerscale’s investigations seek to understand more about the ‘why’ and to unpick the historical context of the crime and the way in which it was reported by the rapacious press.

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Tipping the Velvet (1998): Sarah Waters

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★★★★

One of the most mortifying moments of my teenage years – and there’s plenty of competition, believe me – was watching the BBC’s adaptation of Tipping the Velvet with my parents at the age of seventeen. I remember being utterly shocked (I had a very sheltered upbringing), although since it’s rated 15 it really can’t have been that scandalous. I’ve read two of Sarah Waters’s books since then, but I’d never quite had the courage to go back to this: her first and most celebrated novel. However, I found it in Oxfam yesterday, decided to give it a go at last, and have devoured it at high speed. Beautifully written, evocative, sexy and playfully transgressive, it deserves its status as a modern classic. I could claim I timed this post specifically to coincide with Pride, but that’s just a happy coincidence.

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The Improbability of Love (2015): Hannah Rothschild

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★★★

I’ve said before that my reaction to books is often affected by the context in which they’re read. Unfortunately Hannah Rothschild’s Improbability of Love will always be associated, for me, with the bleakness of my country’s vote to leave the EU. I can’t go into my feelings in depth here; I only hope that we find a way to mitigate the disastrous divisions in our society and to keep our relationship with Europe strong. In the meantime, we just have to keep our chins up and hope for the best. And so; back to the book.

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Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (2002): Claire Tomalin

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★★★★½

On 1 January 1660, a young clerk in the Exchequer in London began to keep a diary. He wasn’t the first diarist in history, far from it; but he was the first to find such potential in the form, and to make of his diary more than a dry chronicle of the times, or a self-examination of sins. This diary was different. From its very first page it showed an almost shocking candour as the young clerk recorded not only his work and social life, but also the most frank and intimate details about his marriage and his own turbulent sexual desires. This honesty sat alongside a lively intelligence which drank in all the events of the world around him. This clerk was Samuel Pepys and, from a historical point of view, he couldn’t have chosen a better moment to start such a detailed account of his life.

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Another London (2012)

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Davidson: Girl with Kitten

International Photographers Capture City Life 1930-1980

(Tate Britain, until 16 September 2012)

The haunting image stares out from posters all over London at the moment. Even though she isn’t looking at the camera, but somewhere off over the viewer’s right shoulder, there’s something captivating about her eyes. Large, wary and so, so vulnerable. Standing alone by the side of a road, with a rolled sleeping bag on her shoulder, she cradles a tiny kitten in skinny hands. It has a collar made from a rough piece of twine. Two strays, you might say, bound together by a little piece of string.

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