Recent paperbacks
Faithful RusIan Georgi Vladimov (Penguin pp. 185, £0.95). A May Day procession is broken up by guard dogs mistaking it for a column of prisoners. A biography of a dog and an indictment of Stalin, all in one, with the animal insight of Richard Adams and political insight of Solzhenitsyn, to whom this story was attributed before Vladimov admitted authorship.
The White Album Joan Didion (Penguin pp. 223, £1.95). Essays on California in the late Sixties when Reagan was Governor, Robert Kennedy was running for President and flowers were power. Vietnam, Manson, Black Panthers, Paul Getty, the Berkeley campus, Malibu, Sunset Strip, Jackie and An, bikers, baby booms, liberated women, consumer explosions and other horrors of yesteryear vividly recalled and safely pasted in. Being Bernard Berenson Meryl Secrest (Penguin pp. 473, £3.95). A Pulitzer prizewinning biography 'not likely to be surpassed', says Lord Clark. A poor Lithuanian Jew whose villa in Florence became a Mecca for artists, thinkers and others interested (or not) in Renaissance art. Did commercial factors influence his artistic judgments? Sensitive and objective.
A Five Year Sentence Bernice Rubens (Sphere pp. 186, £1.10). Miss Hawkins wants to kill her
self on the day she retires from a lifetime's obedient service in a sweet factory. But she is given a five-year diary which she fills in and obeys. A series of unlikely adventures ending up with a neat murder.
Ireland, A Social and Cultural History 1922-79 Terence Brown (Fontana pp. 364, £3.50). Books on Ireland don't sell — a British blindspot. Conservatism sets in after the 1921 treaty. More people emigrate than marry, with peculiar effects on the new nation. 'Protestant society remained like stale prawns in aspic'.
A Great Love Alexandra Kollontai (Virago pp. 156,£2.50). Novel from the author of Love of Worker Bees, by only woman in Lenin's 1917 government. The conflict of love and work, based on Lenin's affair with Inessa Armand, with whom Kollontai worked closely before and after the revolution. Sexual passion versus revolutionary zeal, with historical authenticity, the lot.
The Fall of Paris Alistair Horne (Penguin pp. 540, £3.95), Rats and balloons is all it means to most of us but this account of the siege and the commune of 1870-71 investigates the root of all evil, Franco-German relations. The collapse of the civilised world as seen from many conflicting viewpoints, very cleverly and readably assembled.
Who's Watching You Crispin Aubrey (Penguin pp. 204, £1.50). A timely probe into MI5 (and/or KGB?) by a Time Out reporter who was probed by them once too often. Pictures of buildings and devices used by ever-growing security services will be handy for journalists, students, trade unionists, nuclear protesters, Welsh Nationalists and other subversives.
Vice Versa F. Anstey (Penguin pp. 302, £1.25). First published in 1882, filmed in 1947 and shortly to be a TV serial. A magical stone makes father and son change places. Dad has a rough time at prep school while his boy luxuriates in the City and Bayswater. 'A sober man may laugh without shame' said the LondonBeview in 1915. Tyrants Destroyed and other stories Vladimir Nabokov (Penguin pp. 219, £2.50). Twelve stories written in Berlin, Paris and Mentone between the wars, and one in New York later. Hitler, Lenin and Stalin, sadness and loss, terror and fantasy, love and exile.
Sophie's Choice William Styron (Corgi pp. 684, £1.95). A gripping melodrama of Auschwitz and Brooklyn. Sting°, a struggling writer, gets involved with Sophie who has a manic lover and a secret past. Sophie's choice was a grizzly family decision she had to make in the prison camp during the war. Long very readable Dickensian set-pieces with motion-picture written all over them.
News from Tartary Peter Fleming (Futura pp. 400, £1.75). Re-issued after 45 years, now a politically impossible journey from Peking to Srinagar, 3,500 miles by mule, donkey, camel and yak, accompanied by a French girl. Even then the Chinese were pretty difficult. We learn a lot about the Afghans, Mongols, Turks, the Russians and the British but not much about the French girl, which shows how times change. The Obstacle Race Germaine Greer (Picador pp. 360, £5.95). Why can't women paint? Or, sorry, how men stopped women painting. 'Devote your life to the happiness of your husband and children' one art teacher said. Ruskin preferred the work of his prettier female pupils. Some paint just like their husbands, others do it strictly as a hobby but 'you cannot make great artists out of egos that have been damaged'. But art and women are now changing in ways that will bring them together.
Clementine Churchill Mary Soames (Penguin pp. 747, £2.50). The great woman, if we may call her that, by her daughter. Sixty years of affectionate notes between Winston and Clemmie often on such domestic details as children's toys and some pretty terse memos on affairs of state from her to him. Her strength and wisdom was clearly a restraining influence, A bit tough not accompanying him on his painting holidays but, fortunately for us, they liked writing letters. Karma Cola Gita Mehta (Fontana pp. 201, £1.50). The Beatles discovered India while escaping from America, which was as confusing for the Indians as it was for us. Mrs Mehta is as at home in Bombay or Calcutta as in Paris or New York collecting anecdotes and images ('the tedium of being from the East when everything for sale is from the East. They had promised us Arpelle and given us patchouli?) Rock stars and gurus, pop culture and population control, mystic marketing and hypodermic experiences; a brainstorm on every page.
In The Secret State Robert McCrum (Fontana pP. 254, £1.50). About to retire, Frank Strange finds things are not as he thought and gets dragged int° a tantalising web of internal corruption. A thriller that breaks all the rules; no spies, reds or gold and the mystery remains unresolved. A brilliant exposé of the British obsession with secrecy and spurious loyalty. The History of Myddle Richard Gough (Penguin pp. 334, £2.50). Gossip becomes history after 280 years. A detailed contemporary account of life in a Shropshire village in 1700, taken pew by pew in the parish church. Violent and promiscuous times. For instance, I learn that one of my forbears was the victim of a plot by three wives to poison their husbands. 'Butt Onslow onely dyed'. And there is worse to follow.
JAMES HUGHFS-ONSLOW
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