Mark Perryman reviews the perfect reading companions to the sporting summer Summer 2013. The British and Irish Lions win their test series against the Aussies down under. Andy Murray wins Wimbledon. Chris Froome makes it a second Tour de France British Yellow Jersey in a row. Mo Farah does the double in the 5000m and […]
Posts under ‘Books’
Blair’s covert party machine and culture of manipulation to be exposed in new book
Apr 28th, 2014 by Jon Lansman.Last year a book was published – Power Trip A Decade of Policy, Plots and Spin which promised to reveal “the personal feuds, political plots, and media manipulation which lay at New Labour’s core“. It would be, promised its publishers, “a fascinating, funny, and at times shocking account of how government really works“. At the end […]
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Books: spring into action
Apr 20th, 2014 by Mark Perryman.A Hot Summer beckons but perhaps not on the political front? Mark Perryman from finds some books sure to cheer up our inner pessimist. UKIP riding high in the opinion polls, what could be a more dismal sign of the state of opposition outside the Westminster bubble. Whether or not Farage’s party of English poujadists […]
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My Struggle? How will they market that in Germany?
Apr 1st, 2014 by Jack Dunleavy.What a glorious novel this is! What a revelation! Twenty-first century literature has a saviour! His name is Marcel Proust, or, in the original Norwegian, Karl Ove Knausgaard. The book that has saved us all? My Struggle, or, in the original Norwegian, Min Kamp (one wonders how it’ll be marketed in Germany…) six volumes of […]
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For those not in favour of Austerity
Mar 18th, 2014 by Mark Perryman.In Budget week Mark Perryman welcomes a new book that demolishes the Austerity myth. When the Con-Dems ushered in the bright shiny new era of coalition politics with a tripling of student tuition fees the wave of anger this provoked seemed to suggest almost anything opposition-wise was possible. Prominent student leader Clare Solomon described the […]
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Memories of childhood, poker and “First World healthcare”
Dec 31st, 2013 by Conrad Landin.“I have a tendency when reading biographies and autobiographies about elderly or dead people of great accomplishment to want to skip through the early part, especially the childhood.” So wrote Jenny Diski, who now contributes an essay to Meeting the Devil, a collection of short pieces of memoir originally published in the London Review of […]
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New year sports resolutions
Dec 30th, 2013 by Mark Perryman.Mark Perryman from Philosophy Football offers ten resolutions to spice up how we enjoy the sports we love in 2014 Too much Christmas pud, cake and ale over the seasonal break? Feet up in front of the TV for an indecent chunk of the duration? Sport defined as watching it rather than doing it? The […]
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No country is an island, not even Miliband’s Britain
Dec 17th, 2013 by Phil Burton-Cartledge.A strange calm has settled over the Labour Party. There are debates over trade union influence, over what needs to be done to retain those poll leads, but when it comes to the question of political economy there is almost unanimity. From the left in the LRC to the right in Progress there is an […]
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A bookcase for bibliophile Bolsheviks… and the more moderate too
Dec 14th, 2013 by Mark Perryman.MARK PERRYMAN of Philosophy Football rounds up the socialist’s stocking-fillers of choice Cheer up, it could be worse. Well, under this hapless government, probably not, but a bit of seasonal present-giving might at least keep the temptations of miserabilism at bay. 2014 will mark the start of the 1914 centenary hoopla: the centenary to end […]
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For those who can’t love Obama
Dec 12th, 2013 by Jack Dunleavy.I’m willing to make a bet: five years from now, everyone will be talking about Sergio de la Pava. This is an exaggeration obviously, but anyone who likes The Wire will be talking about him, or Louis Ck, or The Occupy Movement. Anyone who is frustrated by ‘literary’ books which cover serious themes in a […]
