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Category: Book Review

  • Book Review: Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die

    Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series is very popular – don’t underestimate it, writes Christopher Jackson

    In our age, there is an increasing suspicion that reading isn’t really that popular a pursuit at all. If we ask why this might be, we can alight on the Internet and television as explanations – but only partially. It is no coincidence that at the same time that the novel has declined, many newspapers are in thrall to the notion of ‘literary fiction’. This umbrella term, unhelpful as it is, broadly refers to writers who have no interest in story or character but are instead ‘noted for their prose’. Really they’re writing poetry without form or rhyme.

    One might legitimately add that almost all these writers are of the left and therefore coming at the world with a series of preconceived ideas about things: the passivity of their prose feels allied to an inherited world view. Independent thought cedes to long waffly passages of description, where the psychological condition of a character is told not by exposure to event but as one-noted perception.

    We’ve forgotten what’s difficult – to tell a good story and to show how people really go through the world. In certain circles you can be met with gales of hatred if you say you prefer CJ Sansom to Ian McEwan as I do, or Ursula K. Le Guin to Zadie Smith; but I am prepared to take this a step further and announce to an astonished world that I prefer Richard Osman to Salman Rushdie.

    Within the world of books which are actually fun to read, the hardest of all genres is crime fiction. The main reason for this is that you are writing for an audience largely made up of people who have read thousands of such novels before. They’re a tough crowd. In addition to this, you have to work within a formula – in the same way that a formal poet will be caught up in metre and rhyme, the writer of murder mystery must have a victim and a murderer, a series of clues and red herrings, and at least one desirable detective. To do all this successfully is sufficiently rare for readers to want to punch the air when they encounter it.

    Richard Osman’s achievement in The Thursday Murder Club series is to create funny and joyful narratives in a genre which you might think of as staid. Simultaneously he manages to say something definitely true about human nature: you shouldn’t count out the old.

    The Thursday Murder Club series is set in a Kent retirement village and is now into its fourth book. In order of publication, these are: The Thursday Murder Club (2020), The Man Who Died Twice (2021), The Bullet that Missed (2022), and the new book The Last Devil to Die (2023). The inspiration behind the books was delightfully simple. Osman, best known for being the presenter of TV’s Pointless, was visiting his mother at one such place, having lunch with her and her intelligent friends, and he looked around and thought: “This is a perfect place for a murder.” Then came the ensuing thought: “And I bet these old folk would be the ones to solve it.”

    What is good about the conception is that it reminds us that we tend to look through the old when we really shouldn’t. Almost by definition they know more than we do – even if, as one character does in the series, they’re beginning to lose their marbles. Osman knows that dementia is a terrible thing, but it is also a kind of experience and therefore a kind of wisdom.

    In a world where judges retire at 70, and accountants somewhat earlier, these books can be read as a quiet broadside to the way we treat the elderly: in forgetting what they did for us, we also forget what they’re now capable of.

    The Thursday Murder Club itself consists of Elizabeth, a retired spook, who is very much the ring-leader; her best friend the widow Joyce, through whose eyes we see many events in the books; Ibrahim, a gay retired psychotherapist; and Ron, a left-wing divorcee, whose boxer son Jason also features from time to time in the books.

    It is worth sampling Joyce’s voice to get an idea of the comedy of Osman’s world:

    We’ve had the most wonderful New Year’s bash. We drank, we counted down to midnight and watched the fireworks on TV. We sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’, Ron fell over a coffee table, and we all went home.

    The humour is almost always dropped in like this, incidental to the plot – or perhaps bundled in with it. We can see the comedy of Ron falling over, but it rushes past us and doesn’t hold us up: this is what distinguishes the books from those of, say, PG Wodehouse, where we are always building towards set pieces like the Gussy Fink-Nottle prizegiving scene in Right Ho, Jeeves. Wodehouse is pure knockabout comedy; Osman’s laughs are part of the fabric of a world where crime occurs.

    The crimes themselves lead onto another set of characters – specifically Chris and Donna, the likeable detectives whose love lives the Thursday Murder Club quartet also mind about. Chris has been given Osman’s own eating addiction, which the writer has been open about in interview. The image of the police which the books gives is broadly favourable – but then this is to be expected of a writer whose overall view of humanity is generous. In fact, if it comes to that he’s generous also to the criminals. Here is a representative passage about Mitch Maxwell in The Last Devil to Die who is probably Osman’s funniest creation to date:


    Here’s the thing. It’s a great deal easier being interviewed by the police than another criminal. Mitch Maxwell has been interviewed by the police many times, and their resources and opportunities are limited. Everything is on tape, your overpaid solicitor gets to sit next to you shaking her head at the questions, and, by law, they have to make you a cup of tea.

    Sometimes this sort of writing has led critics, who should be enjoying the books, to tut and say that Osman doesn’t in the end take crime very seriously at all. Personally, I think he is just a better writer than the people writing about him. Who’s to say that it’s not slightly annoying to be a book reviewer dealing in prose – and perhaps with an unpublished novel or two sitting in the desk drawer – and to find that a mere TV man can write so well?

    The other magnificent thing about these books is that because we’re dealing with a group of elderly detectives, we get a sense of how much time matters. The action across all four books probably takes place over a mere calendar year. This means that a new set of murders is usually kicking off a matter of weeks after the previous. This creates a sense that the characters are packing lots into their lives, and we feel we might emulate this in ours, even if we’re not solving murders ourselves.

    But this is not to say that Osman turns his attention away from the aging process: without wishing to give spoiler alerts, in The Last Devil to Die, he confronts it head on with great wisdom and tenderness. About the plot itself I shall say little for fear of giving it away. But in this book Elizabeth, the leader of the gang, is undergoing some personal difficulties which mean that Joyce now takes centre stage in solving the murders: the Thursday Murder Club is evolving over time. I was pleased to see we also get to know Ibrahim better in this book too.

    Naturally, we mustn’t go too far. Osman isn’t Shakespeare; the real poetic pleasures aren’t to be found in these books as they might be in those rare literary novels which tell exciting stories. But the joy they give is far better than what we’re all too often faced with in literary fiction today: no joy at all.

  • Book review: Amy: In Her Words

    Christopher Jackson discusses the great singer Amy Winehouse would have been 40 this year

     

    The case of Amy Winehouse is so tragic that we could be forgiven for not wishing to revisit it: the druggy freneticism of her short unhappy life is something one is as much inclined to turn away from as to look at. But as a major anniversary rolls round – Winehouse would have been 40 this year, and in her prime – there is the widespread realisation that there is still a market for our morbid fascination with her unhappy fate.

    In the case of the new coffee-table book Amy: In Her Words, the proceeds are going to Amy’s Place, a rehab centre which obviously does good work, according to two testimonials by addicts who have been treated there. But inevitably, given Winehouse’s short life, it is all a bit of a scraping of the barrel.

    The title itself can’t help but be underwhelming. Of course, what we care about is Amy Winehouse’s life in music, and so there is an element of loss and even deflation about this project at the outset. We are reduced to her words now, when it is her voice we would love to hear.

    Even so, it would be very churlish to deny that Winehouse could have a wonderful way with language. We have to remember that what we now consider the completed achievement constitutes what in another life would have been just a very promising start. Had Winehouse lived she would probably have been on her ninth album by now, and we’d know more about what she was capable of. Instead, due to her early death, we sometimes find ourselves allotting maturity to what she did, because it’s all we’ll ever have.

    She was so young – and yet this book shows that a certain wisdom and self-awareness was lodged in her all along, as if in compensation for the likelihood of her early death. “Good words to describe me: loud, bold, melodramatic,” runs one entry.

    But there was always something remarkable about Winehouse, which means we’ll always want to learn more. Winehouse was physically very slight, even before she became bulimic. But the voice itself could do anything: there was always something preternatural about its sheer extent and force coming out of such a vulnerable frame.

    It might be that the great voices seem complete very young. Bob Dylan was a great singer by the age of 22 partly because he sounded like he had access to the wisdom of an octogenarian. The same might be said of Billie Holiday – like Winehouse, an alcoholic who died young – who sounds in a song like ‘Strange Fruit’ as though she has come into the world with an innate knowledge of how things are which would somehow not have changed had she lived to be 100.

    The lyrics don’t matter all that much in Winehouse for the simple reason that the voice is so good that it obliterates all before it. However, she did have a verve with language which shows that she had been paying attention to the linguistic possibilities showcased in Britpop, especially in bands like Blur and Pulp. The content of the lyrics can be dark and depressing since they reflect a life which we wish had been otherwise, but songs like ‘Rehab’, ‘You Know I’m No Good’ and ‘Back to Black’ all have spirited lyrics which mean we can’t dismiss out of hand the notion of a collection of her words.

    Nevertheless, there is a caveat. In those three songs I have mentioned, there are two depressing factors. The first is her self-loathing, leading to an apparently logical insistence on the continuation of drug abuse. It is impossible to listen to ‘Rehab’ without thinking the singer has got the matter precisely wrong and that rehab is really the best place for her. It’s a magnificent track, but in the line about her preferring to listen to Ray Charles than to go to rehab, one wants to be pedantic and remind her that she could just as easily listen to Ray Charles in rehab: if she’d done that she’d still be around today. “Beyoncé and pathos are strangers. Amy Winehouse and pathos are flatmates, and you should see the kitchen,” as the great Clive James put it.

    The second unfortunate aspect of the words is the description of her relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil who is by any standards one of the least appealing plus ones in the history of popular music. Phenomenally vain, there remains the sense that Fielder-Civil took Winehouse for granted, using her as a sort of bank for drug money and not minding about the effect their shared addictions had on her. In the documentary Amy, he sometimes seems to be acting the pantomime villain, until one realises that he really is this way – assuming the complicity of the viewer out of a pure ignorance and arrogance which stood out even in that pointlessly hedonistic decade the so-called Noughties.

    This is what injures these songs from the lyrical perspective and marks out their immaturity: the subject of the song seems so plainly overvalued that we wonder about the validity of Winehouse’s overall perception of life. The scene in Jamaica and Spain in ‘You Know I’m No Good’ for example can in no way have been a ‘sweet reunion’, since it unfortunately was a reunion with Blake. One can sense through the misguided protestations of the lyric that his interest in her carpet burn is transactional and that the singer has fatally misjudged everything about the situation.

    Perhaps we simply know too much about her life. We know nothing of Shakespeare’s life, and it may be that the Dark Lady treated the playwright as badly as Fielder-Civil treated Winehouse. But sometimes it helps not to know, and there must be few Winehouse fans who delight in the notion of Fielder-Civil. We wish she were singing about someone else, but she’s always singing about him.

    Even so, this book reminds us that she could be very funny. There is a brief journal entry berating herself for her eating habits: “No fucking carbs, bitch.” There is also an amusing story in this book of Winehouse in court. When accused wrongly of assaulting a dancer, she showed a leg to the judge and said: “Could someone with feet this small be intimidating?” But every page of sweet drawings, or little notes to self, all of which tapers off by the release of her first album Frank in 2003, is full of an understandable yearning on the part of her bereaved parents who have compiled the book that she were still here.

    This is a book then about the girlhood of someone who dramatically lost all sense of innocence very quickly due to excessive drug and alcohol intake. Why does addiction lead to a loss of innocence, which is really a loss of self? It’s because we cease to dream and wonder which is what children do; instead we’re caught in a loop, unable to look ahead and no longer open to enchantment about what life may yet contain.

    The fact that we wish it could all have been so different for Amy Winehouse can make us forget that sometimes, in precious instances, it was. That was when she was sober in the vocal booth – and then she showed herself to be one of the great singers of any era.

    In certain instances, we talk of God-given talent and sometimes what we are noticing is a huge juxtaposition between a person’s daily life and what, all of a sudden, they can be capable of. The classic example of this is Mozart, though his life has been somewhat Hollywoodised by the Peter Schaffer film Amadeus (1984). It is impossible to shake the sense that something wonderful was bestowed on Winehouse – a complete musical soul which in a remarkably short space of time rushed to maturity, en route to its own destruction.

    The great example of this is her rendition of ‘Valerie’, her version of the Mark Ronson song which had originally appeared on the 2006 Zutons album Tired of Hanging Around. Here, Winehouse shows us what she might have been capable of had she lived: there would have been extensive proof across a large catalogue that she had few obvious peers in the interpretation of song.

    It’s worth remembering that ‘Valerie’ was initially written from the male perspective and so there’s something inherently fun and joyous about Winehouse singing it; the song acquires a certain Sapphic feel just by virtue of her doing it at all. This is important because too many cover versions lack a decent reason for their existence: one needs to know why one isn’t singing a new song, but redoing an old one. Winehouse knew that by taking on this track she would shine a new light on it.

    I am especially fond of the song because, written in 2006, it can transport us back in time to an era just before the widespread adoption of the mobile phone and WhatsApp. The Internet had been invented, yes, but we were still communicating over written email. In this song, the singer – Ronson/Winehouse – goes to the US and meets a vivacious ginger-haired girl who he falls for. He returns to the UK – the song is actually based in Liverpool – and looking out over the sea which separates them, thinks back on his time with her and asks her questions about how she is, whether she’s changed the colour of her hair, and whether she’s got over her legal problems. Today, we’d be in contact, sending photographs of ourselves across the Atlantic.

    The song is fixed in a moment in time when that wasn’t possible, and the heart would ache imagining what someone who we’d left for good was doing. The way Winehouse sings the word ‘hair’ – ‘did you change the colour of your hair?’ – in the first verse is sublime, doting on the physical detail she loved about the vanished girl, but playfully too as if the primary emotion of recollecting her is joy in spite of absence. The same trick is then repeated on the word ‘lawyer’ on verse two – its light-heartedness suggests the girl’s troubles are already surmounted, if only because she’s singing this song to her on the other side of the world.

    The song makes you think of a certain togetherness which the imagination could create when it sought to overcome distance; by association it makes us think of the secret distances between us in the interconnected world we now have.

    It is the good nature of the song and the generosity of Winehouse’s performance which marks ‘Valerie’ out and makes us mourn her all the more. Most songs written by men who have been separated from their women take a jealous turn: the song will usually say something to the effect of: “I bet you’re with some other man and I’m jealous enough to write this song about my predicament.”

    Such songs reflect how many people feel, but they’re essentially selfish. ‘Valerie’ isn’t like that at all: it roots for the girl no matter what she’s doing. It wants her well-being and her friendship come what may. It’s an extremely good song, but it took Winehouse to turn into a great record.

    In wishing she had lived longer, we can forget that she lived at all – and that we wouldn’t wish for more if she hadn’t hit such heights. ‘Valerie’, most of Back to Black, some of Frank, the incredible skirling vocal in the bridge to her cover of Carol King’s ‘Will You Love me Tomorrow?’ – most of us have outlived Winehouse by many years and never found such glory within ourselves.

    In the end, the attempt to resurrect Winehouse in this book, and in the upcoming film Back to Black starring Marisa Abela, bump up against the fact that she resurrects herself every day the world over on iTunes and Spotify. That’s the good news about her: the music is where her life always was, and where it will always be.

  • Book review: Ronel Lehmann reviews Dame Esther Rantzen’s Older and Bolder

    Ronel Lehmann

     

    I often remind our student candidates that it is normal to be nervous before an interview. At their age, I was so very fortunate to shadow Esther Rantzen from her green room to live broadcast on BBC That’s Life and Hearts of Gold. The minute before she waited to walk on to receive rapturous live audience applause, you could see stage fright kick in and the shear look of terror on her face. Of course, it was all gone as quick as it arrived once the programme titles started rolling. It is good that in her golden years, she is still inspiring the next generation with her wisdom.

    Her sixth book Over entitled “Older & Bolder” is crammed with advice, gleaned from her own experience, what she has learned as a journalist, author and broadcaster, and from what she has been told on the rare occasions when she has actually listened to somebody else who turned out to be worth hearing.

    This energising book charts her time travels through her most significant memories, from meeting Princess Diana to creating a national outrage with a mischievous short film about a driving dog and reflects with candour and humour on the life lessons she has learned, revealing the hints, hacks and personal philosophies that have been her secrets to surviving almost everything.

    We may not all achieve what Dame Esther has, but here we can soak up her wisdom, laughter and learn from her, embracing the passing years and march boldly on.

    Over a career spanning five decades Dame Esther Rantzen has appeared in more than 2,000 television broadcasts, in her regular contributions to political and news programmes, including The One Show, she especially advocates protecting vulnerable people and growing old ungracefully. She is also a reality TV favourite with appearances on Strictly Come Dancing, First Dates, and I’m a Celebrity. As a journalist, she writes for the Daily mail, the Guardian, the Telegraph and The Times.

    She was awarded a DBE in 2015 for her services to children and older people, through her pioneering work as founder of Childline and The Silver Line.

    I am still in touch with Dame Esther today. Sadly, she was recently diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. Her quote “Remember that history is written by the survivors, be bolder as you grow older and make sure you float above any challenges that threaten to overwhelm you,” will resonate with all those who have had the privilege of meeting or working with her and the audiences of tens of millions who avidly placed their trust in her during a career spanning five decades.

    Her generosity of spirit to others less fortunate will always live on.

    Older and Bolder: My A-Z of Surviving Almost Everything is out now from Penguin Books

  • Armando Iannucci’s Pandemonium: “quite funny – but only quite”

    Christopher Jackson

     

    Say, heaving Muse, what catalogue of restraints

    And luckless lockdowns fell upon th’unwilling world

    Accompanied by pain and stifled shouts of family grief

    Till the world’s wisest company of brethren

    In stately halls and candelabra’d chambers flush

    At their desks with freshest data

    Brought an end to that wailing noise

    And comfort to those begging for release.

    So begins Armando Iannucci’s mock-epic poem about the pandemic. This book deserves to be read as a companion piece – or perhaps antidote – to Hancock’s Pandemic Diaries. Iannucci has by this stage of his career earned our attention no matter what he does.

    It might be noted that his satire has always touched on people in jobs when they have no real business being there. From Alan Partridge’s ludicrous claims to television stardom, to the spads who stalk the corridors of Whitehall in The Thick of It and In the Loop, he has always specialised in showing up people who have an unwarranted sense of belonging in roles to which they aren’t suited. The joke about Partridge isn’t just that he’s a bad television presenter; it’s that there’s not decent reason for him to be on television at all. Likewise, Malcom Tucker is a bully in Whitehall, but he would be a bully in a law firm too: his moral being infects everyone around him: he has no business being anywhere near the decision-making process.

    One might say of Iannucci what Hazlitt said of Shakespeare: that in one sense he is no moralist, but that in another sense he is one of the greatest of moralists. He will show you the most disgusting and corrupt people out there – but by showing them to you he’ll convert that disgust to laughter and a better world. Iannucci is one of the most important civilising forces in our world today.

    My sense is that Pandemonium is destined to be a minor work however. You can see from the passage quoted above that while Iannucci is a student of Milton – and throughout this poem shows himself to be familiar with Alexander Pope’s Dunciad – that mock poetry simply isn’t as effective a tool as television as a means of satire.

    This is because the form itself (the poetry) is a distraction from the subject matter (the pandemic). With good television, of course, we hardly consider the medium at all, which is its strength. In Pandemonium, the matter would be helped if the lines were in an even meter but the first line beginning ‘Say, heaving Muse’ is a very ugly alexandrine leading to a tetrameter in line six with ‘At their desks with freshest data’. This last line also happens to be the strongest line in the passage, making me think that a rhyming tetrameter would have been a better choice of form. Coincidentally, this was the meter used by Pushkin in Eugene Onegin – the last poem to really pull this sort of thing off.

    Having said that, over time you get used to Iannucci’s verse and there is a lot to enjoy about the book once you do. We meet a cast of characters every bit as unfit for their role in the political firmament as the cast of The Thick of It. We meet Boris Johnson as ‘Orbis Rex’ (or ‘World King’) – with the poet pointing out that Orbis also happened to be an anagram of ‘Boris’.

    Say how this hero Boris, seeming felled

    By the evil mite, coughed back up

    His gleaming soul renewed and rode out to fight

    Sadness with mirth…

     

    The idea of Boris Johnson as an immortal being is quite funny – but perhaps only quite. Its limitations come from the fact that the trope comes from ancient poetry and that the joke – like many of the jokes in the book – lack the immediacy of television and so can’t really make us laugh in the same way.

    Compare, for instance, the immortal episode of The Thick of It, about the enquiry into the death of Mr. Tickel. There, at every point, the minutiae of language serves to show the idiocy of many of the characters who made up Blairite Westminster. Then compare it with the scene here where Matt Hancock goes to meet the Circle of Friends, Iannucci’s vivid monster which is intended to mock the class of party donors about whom we heard a lot in relation to PPE and other aspects of policy-making during the pandemic:

     

    So these Friends coagulated around themselves,

    Each one bait for another, bait upon bait,

    Knowing one another and each one known,

    Till they knew themselves inside out,

    Arses eaten by faces, faeces dropped on eyes,

    Arms reaching into guts, lips retching hands out whole,

    Bodies intimate and knotted like a dungy braid.

    This is meant to be a metaphor for the sort of friendships which happen in and around the donor classes of the Conservative Party. I’m not sure how successful it is. I suspect from Iannucci’s perspective, all these people are drawn to one another since they all hang around power, but without any particular reasons for being there other than the wish to be close to power. If that were the case then their real predicament is not to know each other, except incidentally. My suspicion is that Iannucci isn’t used to building poetic images and so misses the real opportunity to satire.

    The book therefore, though it is written by someone who is an undoubted master in his usual field, has the feel of a first draft at some points. It also contains illustrations which seem to serve the purpose of padding out a short manuscript to book length.

    That said, this is still an enjoyable read, which enlarges your sense of Iannucci as an artist. It feels like a pandemic-specific project – the work of someone severed by Covid from the day job.

     

    Pandemonium by Armando Iannucci is published by Lighthouse, priced at £9.99

  • Stephen James reviews Lord Ashcroft’s In the Shadows: ‘it will leave you wanting more’

    Lord Ashcroft’s book, ‘In The Shadows’ shines a light on the extraordinary world of the Intelligence Corps, writes Stephen James
     

    Lord Ashcroft’s latest book rightly focuses on “the extraordinary men and women of the Intelligence Corps” whose skills and knowledge help inform Commanders where the enemy is, what they are doing, and what they are capable of. Now, at this point, I’d like to declare an interest – I served in the Intelligence Corps throughout the 2000s (deploying on operations to Afghanistan twice). As with any member of the Corps, I’m fiercely proud of my Corps and its history.

     

    The Intelligence Corps is one of the youngest units in the British Army; it was formally constituted with the consent of King George V on 15 July 1940, with the formation being notified on 19 July 1940 in Army Order 112. The Intelligence Corps played a vital role in World War 2 with its members working for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the founding of the Special Air Service (SAS), and contributing to deciphering the enigma code. Today, the Corps is one of the smallest Corps in the British Army with approximately 1850 serving Officers and soldiers. However, what the Corps lacks in size, it more than makes up for in impact and influence.

     

    Unlike other parts of the military which are known for their aggression (Parachute Regiment), equipment (Royal Tank Regiment / Army Air Corps) or drill on parade (Guards) – the Intelligence Corps does not fit into any particular category. The ‘textbook answer’ is it analyses large amounts of data, to produce accurate and timely intelligence that has an impact on the theatre of operations.

     

    Lord Ashcroft’s book goes further and gives us a fascinating insight into the history of intelligence leading to the establishment of the Intelligence Corps and most importantly, brings the exploits of individual Intelligence Corps soldiers to life!

     

    The Corps itself brings together a wide range of people; some unconventional but all highly skilled intelligence operatives who were able to use their energies in various trades and specialisms that can be brought to bear on the enemy. During my time in the Corps, I worked alongside the Security Service (MI5), Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), as well as foreign intelligence services – and the ability to be flexible and resilient to unpredictable situations was a key trait amongst Corps soldiers and officers.

     

    Some of the stories shared by Lord Ashcroft are not ones I had heard before… not because of my own ignorance of Corps history but because we take its role seriously ‘to protect the Military and its secrets’ – after all, loose lips sink ships! The only times I’ve heard of some of these stories of ‘daring do’ are over hushed tones in the quietness of night over a pint in the mess.

    “There is a reason that the Intelligence Corps is the British Army’s most secretive unit and not as well known as SOE, MI5, MI6 or GCHQ… it’s because we prefer to operate in the shadows!”
    Stephen James

     

    That is not to say that we are not deeply proud of our heroic soldiers who have helped tackle matters of security, terrorism and war, in every conflict since the Second World War but we take seriously, our dedication to service and secrecy. Sadly (or not), it will always be the case that many of the most valiant and brave members of the Intelligence Corps will never have their stories told due to the clandestine nature of their work. That said, this book is packed full of heroic deeds which fill me with pride, and wanting more!

     

    The story of Paddy Leigh Fermor who was a natural recruit to our ranks is one of particular excitement that was also made into a movie starring Dirk Boregare. Paddy was rebellious, free-spirited sort and found himself gathering intelligence in Nazi-occupied Crete, disguised as a shepherd. as well as training and organising the local resistance fighters. As if that wasn’t dangerous enough, Paddy engineered an ambitious plan: to kidnap a German general and dispatch him to British Army headquarters in Cairo. For his ‘courage and audacity’ in planning and executing the high-stakes mission, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

     

    The Corps is very good at shaping itself to the current threat, the Cold War and The Troubles in Northern Ireland placed huge demands on the Intelligence Corps and as I joined it was starting to pivot towards Afghanistan. Although NI was a thousand miles away, the lessons we learnt during The Troubles enabled us to draw on the experience of senior soldiers who were used to asymmetric warfare.

     

    My one critique is not the author’s fault, but more a consequence of writing about such a secretive organisation – because it is inevitable that some extraordinary men and women are missing from this account. Lord Ashcroft could have included them but not without being locked up in the Tower of London for sharing state secrets. For example, The ‘Special Reconnaissance Unit’, also known as the “The Det” was a part of the Corps. It involved plainclothes operations in Northern Ireland from the 1970s onwards where numerous members of the Corps lost their lives. I know several stories about individuals, who, in my opinion, would deserve to be included in this book.

     

    Overall, In the Shadows will give you an explanation of how the Intelligence Corps recruits the best and the brightest. It is not only for those with linguistic and intelligence skills but also for rogues, rascals and raconteurs – those with the ability to think outside the box. During my intake, we had such a broad range of people who brought different skills to the Corps – and whatever you think an Operator of Military Intelligence is… it isn’t… there is no type. But in my view there are similar employability traits such as attention to detail, a passion for problem solving, excellent communication skills and adaptability to constantly evolving situations. In a world where transferable skills provide you with the best opportunities for success, I am thankful to the Intelligence Corps jobs who have shaped my skill set and Finito who are now also helping me refine further into the corporate world!

     

    Short of joining yourself, if you want to get an idea of what the extraordinary men and women of the Intelligence Corps really do, this is an enjoyable read that will leave you wanting more.

     

    Stephen James is a former member of the Intelligence Corps and one of our Finito’s Business Mentors.

     

    In the Shadows: The extraordinary men and women of the Intelligence Corps is published by Biteback priced £25

     

  • Christopher Jackson reviews Bob Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song: “A great career has its basis ultimately in enthusiasm’

    Christopher Jackson

     

    ‘Curioser and curioser,’ said Alice.” The lines come from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland but might easily have been describing the career of Bob Dylan.

    In Dylan’s world nothing is ever what we might expect, and it’s this quality of oddity which has created the obsessiveness of so-called Dylanologists. And now, just as his recording career has settled down into the possible endpoint of 2020’s Rough and Rowdy Ways, and his art career seems also established in a comfortable retrospective – called Retrospectrum – at the Frost Art Museum, we get something altogether different again. Indefatigability is an underrated character of high achievers: Dylan is stubborn and remorseless, able to find an audience while remaining tied to deliberate mystery.

    His literary career is brief, and occasional – a fact which alone makes it peculiar to consider that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. But his output in books shows in microcosm his essential strangeness. First comes an incomprehensible novel Tarantula, released during the height of 1960s mayhem. Dylan then releases in 2003, a magnificent memoir Chronicles Vol., only to eschew publication of a second. Now we have something altogether different to what we were expecting – except if we had recalibrated our expectations to anticipate the improbable.

    Strangeness will not always amount to genius, but it is impossible when reading this latest offering The Philosophy of Modern Song not to remember Schopenhauer’s remark that talent hits a target no other can hit, and genius a target none can see.

    There’s never been a book like this. The book consists of 65 essays on songs which have influenced Dylan, mainly by men – as numerous reviewers have pointed out – and predominantly emanating out of the 1950s of his youth. Most of them have essays in the second person. Many feel oddly pertinent. This riff, for instance, on Elvis Presley’s ‘Money Honey’ feels relevant to the inflationary status quo:


    This money thing is driving you up the wall, it’s got you dragged out and spooked, it’s a constant concern. The landlord’s at your door and he’s ringing the bell. Lots of space between the rings, and you’re hoping he’ll go away, like there’s nobody home.

    Dylan recently sold his back catalogue to Universal for around $300 million, but there is somehow an authentic note to this – a wisdom which has come his way through songs. It was Eddie Izzard who joked that fame tended to injure comedy as you can’t begin a joke with ‘My butler went to the supermarket.’ Dylan doesn’t always get it right; after this book was published, it emerged that copies of this book masquerading as possessing his unique signature had in fact been signed electronically. It was unacceptable, but in this book, the writer gives the impression of being able to get to the core of things, even when looking at the world through the tinted glass of a limousine.

     

    Sometimes, as in the extended riff on ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ – Dylan writes about the Carl Perkins and not the Presley version – the predominant note is comic:

     

    You get on with most people, and you put up with a lot, and you hardly get caught off guard, but your shoes are something else. Minor things may annoy you but you rise above them. Having your teeth kicked in, being pounded senseless, being dumped on and discredited, but you don’t put any weight on that, none of it’s as real to you as your shoes. They’re priceless and beyond monetary worth. 

    The chapter only grows more absurd until Dylan writes of these shoes: “They neither move nor speak, yet they vibrate with life, and contain the infinite power of the sun.” It’s writing which is a joy in itself but also transforms your listening. Spotify already has several playlists featuring the songs in this book: it is a transformative listen as well as a transformative read.

    Another aspect to this book is the curation of its splendid photographs which makes the book a luxury object and also ups the price to £35 at the same time. The collection is prefaced by a fascinating portrait of a young Elvis browsing in a record store; ‘London Calling’ by the Clash is illustrated by a picture of bobbies breaking up a riot; ‘Cheaper to Keep Her’ by Johnnie Taylor, includes an ad for a divorce law firm.

    That chapter also contains an intriguing invective against the divorce law profession which, having been through several marriages, is a topic close to Dylan’s heart. It’s not the only passage which feels autobiographical. Dylan’s love of London is brought out when discussing The Clash:


    London calling – send food, clothing, airplanes, whatever you could do. But then, calling is immediate, especially to Americans. It wouldn’t be the same as Rome calling or Paris calling or Copenhagen calling or Buenos Aires, or Sydney, or even Moscow. You can pass off all these calls with somebody saying, “Take a message, we’ll call you back.” But not with London calling. 

    Likewise a dissertation on the little known singer Johnny Paycheck delivers this thought from the man who began life as Robert Zimmerman: “And then there are those who change their own names, either on the run from some unseen demon of heading toward something else.”

    It all amounts to a new kind of colloquialised, aestheticized and poeticised music criticism. It’s a homage to all that Dylan has known and loved, and perhaps in that sense has a valedictory feel: but then once you’re 81 everything feels like a goodbye. Yet you’re also reminded that the book is at the same time a hello, and a gift. It reminds you of Dylan’s explanation of his songwriting: “Every song I’ve ever written is saying: ‘Good luck, I hope you make it’.”

    Despite a bit of padding here and there, taken in the round the book has the feeling of necessity: Dylan’s long career appears to have taught him to wait on the vital inspiration. His latest records, now spread further and further apart to the extent that one wonders whether to expect another, have the same quality this book has of things which had to be done, since they could only be done by Dylan – and only done by him at the moment when they were carried out. All great artists are opportunists in that then they end up claiming all the prizes going.

    Greed is an aspect of Dylan’s life – or perhaps hunger. Because alongside this selectiveness of projects is also the other side to him: profusion, growth, energy, and restlessness. These qualities are all encapsulated by the Neverending Tour which has just swung through the UK during the publication of this book.

    There are limits to this book: you can sense that by the last 10 songs or so, the exercise has been largely spent and that some of the tropes have become repetitive. But this sense is more than offset by the enormous impact which the first half has: it feels regenerative, and makes you want to listen again not just to these songs, but to all music.

    A great career has its basis ultimately in enthusiasm. What we glimpse here is the power of that early passion for music which the young Dylan had: it was this which propelled him forwards, changing popular culture along the way, and eventually entering the annals of the true greats. The value of this book is that it needn’t necessarily apply to budding musicians: its lessons are transferable across sectors.

    We also sense that it is just a tiny corner of a voluminous mind. Artists who Dylan knew well – most notably Leonard Cohen and The Beatles – don’t feature at all. So this books suggests other books which will likely remain unwritten – at least unwritten by Dylan.

    This is a book which doesn’t mind who you are or where you are. It only wants to grip you and never let you go until you succeed. In another sense it doesn’t mind what you do, provided you listen to the music.

     

    The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan is published by Simon and Schuster (£35)

     

  • Book review: Ronel Lehmann on Lord Cruddas’s Passport to Success: From Milkman to Mayfair

    Ronel Lehmann

     

    I could not put the book down from the moment that I began reading, despite its author for a time crossing the road when he saw me approach. As an Honorary Trustee, I was fundraising for Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice capital appeal and Peter was inundated with similar requests. He did contribute for which we will always be incredibly grateful. It set the scene for what was a remarkable journey From Milkman to Mayfair.

    Unlike many business leader autobiographies, this was not ghost written but penned by the great man himself. Whilst reading you can hear his tone of voice during an extraordinary voyage right to the top.

    The son of a meat market porter and an office cleaner, Peter left Shoreditch Comprehensive School at the age of fifteen with no qualifications and a part time job as a milkman. Today he’s Lord Cruddas of Shoreditch, the founder of a £1.5 billion financial trading company and a distinguished philanthropist, giving to over two hundred charities through his foundation which helps young people from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    Fed up with Labours economic management, Peter began his foray into politics, becoming a key Conservative Party donor. But after being elevated to Treasurer in 2011, he fell victim to a Sunday Times sting which he was falsely accused of breaking the law on party donations. With unflinching honesty, he reveals the full story of his successful libel battle and opens of Pandora’s box of profound wider questions about newspaper dark arts and the power of the British press over the judicial system.

    Refusing to be scared off from the political world, Peter co-founded the winning Vote Leave campaign. Here, he gives a detailed insider view of the real reasons behind the victory and contemplates how Britain can now thrive outside the EU.

    Filled with heartbreak and elations, this is the extraordinary story of Peter’s epic rise from an east London council estate to a Mayfair mansion – and includes plenty of tips for budding billionaires, not to mention the importance of giving back.

    Honestly, I cannot wait for his sequel, and so will you.


    Passport to Success is published by Biteback Publishing at £20

  • Review: Talan Skeels-Piggins: The Little Person Inside

    This column hasn’t so far made a habit of reviewing children’s books, but it mustn’t ever be said we don’t celebrate the achievements of our mentors and so an exception has been made here. Besides, this short book by Talan Skeels-Piggins is a pleasure to read and is also splendidly illustrated by Natascha Taylor.

    The books takes the form of a potted autobiography and Skeels-Piggins really does have an extraordinary story to tell: it contains lessons about resilience and creativity which apply as much to the adult reader as to children. The book resembles the hit series Big People, Little Dreams – except that it is a book about Skeels-Piggins written by Skeels-Piggins himself.

    His story is heartbreaking and heartwarming all in one go. Talan has been many things but he began as a teacher, not knowing at that stage that his life would be all about the wider lessons he has learned to impart. He writes: “He was always happy to teach others how to play. And so, he joined a big school and became the PE Teacher.” This need to impart knowledge would stand him in good stead, when the terrible tragedy of his life hit. Skeels-Piggins was the victim of a car accident, and the experience of this is described in simple terms for the young reader: “Talan was very sad. He thought he would never play again. This made him cry.”

    What makes Skeels-Piggins remarkable isn’t just that he did find a way to play again – becoming both a Paralympic skier, and famous motorcycle racer, but also learning that his own story doesn’t have to exist in isolation. Especially during the pandemic, it can connect to all stories – and shed a light on situations utterly unlike his.

    This book therefore celebrates two things – firstly it celebrates resilience, and insodoing implies that life is a thing infinitely worth being resilient about. By telling the story at all, it also celebrates our interconnectedness. As one page has it: ‘Sometimes we all feel lost.’

    This has never been truer than in our bewildering post-pandemic world and it’s this which makes the book so relevant to all of us.

    Skeels-Piggins gives his readers here what he also gives Finito candidates: that affirmation that difficult times are where we really find out who we are – and that they might have a surreptitious value secreted in them. Perhaps, we may even arrive at the astonishing position of being almost glad of the hardship we suffered, as it was only by experiencing adversity that we learned what we had in ourselves to traverse it.

  • A new poem by Martin Plantinga: Between Jobs at Il Palagio

    Between Jobs at Il Palagio

     

    At the point between work and leisure,

    rote hours retain their claim in the body,

    and will not yet be shed:

    they live in the bone, as a signature

    of what was necessary this past year and more.

    Flip-flop-shod,

    without anything particular to do,

    I keep appointment with the vineyard path,

    walking the patterns of the olive shade,

    the ancient curves of Tuscany

    the best the world has come up with,

    my sole calendar the mountain’s tracery.

    Toil had this missing in its addictions.

    Toil took me away from…what exactly?

     

    Now a cockerel screams,

    and renders me leftwards-turning,

    towards a portion of what I’ve needed –

    and which I so suddenly see,

    it is as if I never held a job nor will again:

     

    indiscriminate wildflower, poppy and daisy,

    bank-grasses –

    and most of all, the wind playing in all that,

    incarnate, and whipping the light,

    or the light catching it, just ever so slightly,

    in the gaps between the flowers,

    and the heart quickening its pace

    at something it’s seen, and knows again,

    having not known this in so long –

    that there is a kind of bell that hides in nature,

    which we’re meant to hear, and even obey,

    and I move on, a new role triggered within

    which shall keep me busy

    this side of things being tethered to the temporal.

     

     

  • Review: Ticket to Ride by Sir Peter Lampl

    Ronel Lehmann

    On a trip with Ticket to Ride seemed like a good idea. The train journey was slow compared to reading at speed about an exceptional entrepreneur who regales readers with a compelling memoir. Sir Peter takes us on his inspiring journey from a Yorkshire Council estate, via Oxford and the Boston Consulting Group to New York, in the buccaneering dollar-mad Eighties, where he sets up a leveraged buy-out firm, which nearly goes bust and then finally, in the year it comes good, ends up living next door to Keith Richards and out-earning Sir Mick Jagger. However, returning to Britain after 20 years Peter finds a vastly changed country, one in which the chances for bright kids from low-income backgrounds have plummeted. In response, he puts his business aside and devotes himself to founding the now greatly revered Sutton Trust, providing educational opportunities for large numbers of less well-off children, influencing government policy and putting social mobility at the heart of the national conversation. The guard arrived to check tickets, it was tempting to waive the book cover and at the same time beckon other travellers to purchase a copy of this inspirational read.

    Ticket to Ride is published by Harper Collins at £20