John Osborne
BERLIOZ has always headed the brief list of my favourite Frenchmen, and his boisterous autobiography is something I return to constantly. Reckless, headlong romantic, importunate and an irredeem- able enemy of caution, he seems to be a soaring figure of the 19th century, an almost unthinkable, Gallic jolly good sort. For those who delight in emotional impro- vidence, David Cairn's Berlioz, Volume One: The Making of an Artist (Deutsch, £25) is a firework display of the spirit. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Green (W. H. Allen, £14.95) is an intriguing account of America's abiding cultural imperialism and its most significant contribution to the world. A good companion to Gore Vidal's Holly wood.
Now that the old literary mags have all but disappeared, the short story, like poet- ry to a lesser extent, has lost its appeal to the three-card trickster of literature. With the street corner pitches for scribbling phonies gone, they have been forced to aim at the big Sting of the novel. Of the few surviving masters of this fugitive art, V. S. Pritchett in A Careless Widow and Other Stories (Chatto & Windus, £12.95) shows how it is done without cheating.
Finally, for those who can take their minds off the European Community for five minutes just before bedtime, the new paperback edition of Mrs Miniver (Virago, £4.97), introduced by Valerie Grove, is an appealing tug at indulgent memory.
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