HOW WARS BEGIN - AJP Taylor

You read essays of this quality and realize just how little you know and how things have never been as they appear to have been taught .

These essays/lectures are available on Youtube

THE ISLAND OF SHEEP - John Buchan

 

THE THREE HOSTAGES - John Buchan

 

MR STANDFAST - John Buchan

 

GREENMANTLE - John Buchan

 

THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS -John Buchan

 

NORTH KOREA JOURNAL - Michael Palin

 

A short journal of a ten day trip to North Korea by Palin and film crew.

It is very light but they were under enormous restrictions and I believe it was kept this way so as not to stop future tours of this type going to the country.

You can literally read this in a decent bath.

THE CLIMATE OF TREASON - Andrew Boyle

The best book I've read on the Cambridge spies even though it was published in 1979 when there was not as much information available as there is today.

The author goes into the social background of Britain at the time the eventual 'five' were recruited.  There was a genuine belief among many young wealthy types and "academics"  ( please spare us from them and for evermore) that communism was the answer to the imbalance in society perhaps a  way to fight the rise of  fascism.

This is a great read, it shows Burgess as a much more productive spy than as the drunken Buffon that he often portrayed.

These five will continue to get written about as more papers are released.  To think there was only five spying is naïve in the extreme.  I suspect there were dozens but as the British intelligence services were so totally incompetent we will never know a number and how many deals were done like in Blunt's case.

This is hard to get in hard back but easy in paperback so get it and read it if this period interests you at all.

 

MEMOIRS OF HECATE COUNTY - Edmund Wilson

This is a collection of short stories, rather then a novel as it is touted, narrated by an anonymous person. The writing is fantastic, very readable, the stories "ramble"  a bit and could have done with some editing.  A good read but not the great read some blurbs have it as.

I'm thinking its fame owes a bit to one story that is quite explicit sexually for the late 1940's rather than great stories. 

THE LOCK UP- John Banville

 

Again, an ordinary mystery but the writing is beautiful.  Not often someone who should become a Nobel laureate "retires" and writes crime full time.  Gorgeous 

EUROPE EAST & WEST- Norman Davis

Possible the most lucid history writing I've come across.  Very accessible for the lay man
 

THE HOUSE OF GETTY -Russell Miller

A genius businessman, exceptionally hard worker, an absolute monster of a human being.

 

BROTHERS IN ARMS- James Holland

 

Fantastic read.  You are more likely to get me into a submarine that a you are a tank.

THE MARQUIS DE SADE - Donald Thomas

A rather dull book about a freak who wrote books.
 

HARD CANDY - Andrew Vachss