Kiss Me Chudleigh: The World According To Auberon Waugh

Being offensive is an easy thing to do and something most people are quite good at; doing it intelligently, though, is a literary achievement. Auberon Waugh was a master of this craft and excelled at finding the hornet’s nest where none existed before. 

The Hemingses Of Monticello: An American Family

At a time while the first Afro-American President resides at the White House, Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses Of Monticello: An American Family is published by Norton. It’s quite a different story about the second family of a historic President. 

Brideshead Revisited

With Ben Whishaw as camp as a row of tents and the long shadows of an incomparable TV series putting the movie Brideshead Revisited into the category of been there, seen it, bought the t-shirt, it’s Brideshead Revisited, again, one might say. I revisited it for the third time, being on the wrong (or right) side of forty to remember the TV series from the eighties and to have read the book by Evelyn Waugh. 

The Ascent of Money

Niall Ferguson’s The Ascent of Money was published by Allen Lane. A Harvard historian shows the star economists how economics work and worked. His conclusions are at the same time obvious and disturbing. 

The Man With The Golden Touch: How The Bond Films Conquered The World

The Man with The Golden Touch: How the Bond Movies Conquered the World by Sinclair McKay was published by Aurum. Is it a case of just one more writer jumping on the marketing train of Quantum of Solace and the James Bond bandwagon (or would that be a bondwagon)? Not quite.