Climbing the Bookshelves: The Autobiography by Shirley Williams 432pp, Virago, £20 Few politicians are loved or even liked.Shirley Williams was and is an exception. The warmth of her mellifluous voice can unfreeze the frostiest public meeting. Rumpled, unbrushed and late, she brings intensity and informality into any room. Likability, affability, apparent normality, sounding as if they mean […]
Lawyers?
Posted on by James Woodward
I have always felt a certain amount of ambivalence towards lawyers – based on experience and a little envy at the sheer injustice of a society that pays them so much for their work! Imagine then the circumstances whereby I choose to buy a lawyers memoirs! Putting money in the direction where none is needed! […]
Theological Reflection
Posted on by James Woodward
I am busy at the moment beginning to prepare to do some scoping for a new book on theological reflection – a movement away from some of my usual topics ! Here is a starter thought: ‘Christians are not reticent about expressing their opinions such matters, and one countless others. In doing so they are […]
James Lees-Milne: The Life, By Michael Bloch
Posted on by James Woodward
Thackeray defined snobbery as “to meanly admire mean things”. Another definition might be a judgment made by arbitrary standards, for example extrapolating moral worth from social position. From this vantage point, James Lees-Milne (1908-97) was certainly a snob. He genuinely did believe that his chum the Duchess of Devonshire was a better person by dint […]
Holiday Reading (4) – The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
Posted on by James Woodward
De Botton usually mixes idiosyncratic illustrations or photographs with an array of memorable quotations. In looking closely at specific arenas of labour, he hopes this book will serve as “a hymn to the intelligence, peculiarity, beauty and horror of the modern workplace and, not least, its extraordinary claim to be able to provide us, […]
Holiday Reading (3) Building Jerusalem
Posted on by James Woodward
Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City by Tristram Hunt Weidenfeld & Nicholson £25, pp472 There is a great deal to admire about Building Jerusalem – its scope, its clarity and the enthusiasm with which it celebrates its subject. He has devoted much of his preface to an assault on the way in […]
Holiday Reading (2) Florence Nightingdale by Mark Bostridge
Posted on by James Woodward
Florence Nightingale is a strange figure, both too frequently written about and too little understood. Mark Bostridge is the ideal assessor – measured, temperately partisan, yet never losing a sense of perspective over this whirlwind of ambition; this astonishing, formidable, and frequently supremely arrogant and irritating woman. Florence Nightingale was born into a quintessentially […]
Holiday Reading – Westminster Abbey by Richard Jenkyns
Posted on by James Woodward
One of the delights of being unable to pass by a bookshop(especially if it is secondhand where bargins are to be had) is the sheer delight of discovery. This latest purchase added to the holiday reading written so beautifully by the professor of the Classical Tradition in The University of Oxford. Part of the […]
Is anything private anymore??
Posted on by James Woodward
This is a kind of kiss and tell book that both attracts (for the gossip I confess but also the sheer wonder at how on earth he managed to get away with so much) and also repells. Is anything private – what of the seal of the confessional? We find him rubbing shoulders with a […]
Too Old for what?
Posted on by James Woodward
Oliver Popplewell is annoyed. Why? At 75 he is obliged to retire from his post as a High Court Judge. He then embarks upon an adventure and ther eis the result! Sir Oliver Popplewell became, in his own words, officially “judicially senile” after a distinguished career at the Bar, as a High court judge specializing […]
Its not what you know but who??
Posted on by James Woodward
When John Rae became headmaster of Westminster School in the early Seventies the IRA was regularly setting off devices around Parliament, 200 yards from the school. Neither he nor his 479 pupils seemed unduly concerned: “A housemaster tells me that a boarder returned to his house carrying a piece of exploded car,” he wrote […]
Relational Aesthetics
Posted on by James Woodward
FOR EVIDENCE OF ART’S recent love affair with “interactivity” and “connectivity,” one need look no further than the pair of digital art surveys currently playing at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For less literal proof, this book is captivating and challenging ! As a young critic in […]
Whitehall
Posted on by James Woodward
Whitehall is a monument to British constitutional history, a curious, unsatisfactory muddle of royalty, fleeting republicanism, imperialism and bureaucratic compromise. No wonder Prince Charles is a defender of architectural tradition. Like love and marriage, power and architecture go together, only much, much more. When Henry VIII took over his old tutor Thomas Wolsey’s mighty […]
Thatchers Inheritance
Posted on by James Woodward
Thatcher and Sons: A Revolution in three Acts (Allen Lane 2006) Simon Jenkins is a clever, insightful and careful writer. I read this volume after the considerable publicity following the thirtieth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s historic election in 1979. It was one of those books that I bought a few years ago following reading […]
Spirituality and Ageing
Posted on by James Woodward
Spirituality and Aging Robert C. Atchley John Hopkins University Press Maryland 2009 13: 978-0-8018-9119-9 There are a growing number of people who are consumers of literature, retreats, and personal growth programs concerning spirituality. In this admirably concise and important book a retired American teacher of Gerontology offers a contribution to the growing literature which struggles […]
Chris Mullen
Posted on by James Woodward
A View from the Foothills: Diaries of Chris Mullen, Profile Books I thought twice about purchasing this book, but two things clinched the deal with Waterstones – you hardly need any more of my money! The first was the inevitable tease of £5 off the retail price and the second was that Chris […]
Clementine Churchill
Posted on by James Woodward
Clementine Churchill by Mary Soames (Doubleday 2002) One of the great wonders and advantages of second-hand book shops is the real sense of getting a bargain! Don’t you love buying something at a fraction of its original price and somehow feeling that you are pounds in – only to realise, of course, later that […]
Chagall and his brilliance
Posted on by James Woodward
Chagall: Love and Exile by Jackie Wullschlager, Allen Lane 2008. £30 580pp This book must rank as one of the best pieces of writing that I have come across for many a year…. And regular readers to my blog will know that I have a certain enthusiasm for books! It really is a remarkable […]
Valuing Age
Posted on by James Woodward
Authors are vain creatures – and reviews of their own books are anticipated with some interest – here is a review from the Church Times. Valuing Age: Pastoral ministry with older people James Woodward SPCK £12.99 (978-0-281-05779-5) SAUDI ARABIA has an extremely young population. In 2003, of the country’s 24 million people, 43 […]
Hugo Young
Posted on by James Woodward
Curiosity, Hugo Young argues, is the essential ingredient of the best journalism. The only way to understand any world, especially the ever complex, always churning, often deceiving world of politics, is to craft the right questions and then go in search of the answers. It was when he moved from the Sunday Times to the […]