Auberon Waugh
Woe be Unto Thee, O Moab!
My December sermon from the pulpit, as a few people may remember, ended with a paean of praise and thanks to Stephen Fry, who kindly agreed to present the prizes at the Literary Review’s annual award for Bad Sex in Fiction – won this year by Nicholas Royle, whose original and stimulating novel The Matter of the Heart (Abacus £9.99) included the glorious sentence: ‘Yasmin grinned and writhed on the bed, arching her back, making a noise somewhere between a beached seal and a police siren.’
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Great essay by Seán Williams @WiggishHistory in @Lit_Review
A small country "may not have aircraft carriers or regiments of tanks. But guided by an unerring moral compass, it can triumph over even the most fearsomely armed opponent." https://twitter.com/WiggishHistory/status/1278425792385613835
'Like many works that touch on Churchill, this book takes on some of his characteristics: a jaunty prose style, a capacity for confident generalisation and a whiff of bullshit.'
Richard Vinen is unpersuaded by 'The Churchill Myths'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/blood-toil-tears-brexit
'It’s history from a bird’s-eye view. From that perspective, we humans are a passing phenomenon.'
Nigel Andrew on three contrasting books about birds by @RSmythFreelance, @JenGAckerman & @JonathanSlaght.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/thirteen-ways-of-looking-at-a-gyrfalcon