TOP 100 BOOK SITES
| |||
|
| |||
| |||
|
| |||
| Parliament must act on libel | Afua Hirsch With firms like Carter Ruck questioning the law, MPs can no longer ignore the clamour for changeYou know there is something wrong with libel law when even Carter-Ruck – mother of all libel firms and regular claimant against newspapers (including the Guardian) – welcomes the idea of change.Today even free speech gurus were surprised by the appearance of Carter Ruck partner Nigel Tait, who welcomed a report by Index on Censorship and PEN that aims to radically overhaul libel law.Apparently the costs of libel actions in England and Wales – 140 times more expensive here than in any other European jurisdiction – are so extortionate that there is no longer anyone left to defend them."It's very important to stimulate debate", Tait said. "Libel is now so expensive that people settle when they should fight. We have law that is developed on a case by case basis but no one fights cases because they can't afford it".The impact on Carter-Ruck's case-load is one ironic side-effect of the prohibitive cost of libel. The fact is that representing libel claimants is too lucrative to deter firms from the regular and devastating attacks on free speech that result from these cases.Journalists are not the only victims of libel actions – although it has become a hazard of the job for all reporters and for some a deterrent from undertaking high-risk investigative work.Scientists, NGOs and publishers are also bearing the brunt of draconian English libel law, which among other features targeted for change requires the defendant to prove they are not guilty (no presumption of innocence here) and allows a fresh claim each time a defamatory article is accessed online – based on a 19th century rule which has proved bizarrely resilient to the minor changes that have taken place over the last 150 years.Simon Singh – who is being sued by the British Chiropractic Association for an article he wrote about treatment of illness in children – described defending a libel action as "an uphill struggle".Winning, Singh said, was exhausting; losing unthinkable.Tracey Brown from Sense About Science, a charity which promotes debate about science, said that as a result of lawsuits like the one still being fought by Singh, "people stopped raising concerns about clinical trials.""The case hit us like an express train", she added – just in case the knock-on effect of these cases on the hard end of critical scientific debate should be lost.Tomorrow the Guardian is reporting the case of Peter Wilmshurst – the award-winning cardiologist whose lawyers said today could lose half his house because of a remark he made to an American journalist and for which he is being sued – almost inexplicably – in this country.It would be lovely if firms like Carter Ruck exercised a little restraint in bringing these cases, mindful of the pervasive effects on free speech. But the profits involved in suing newspapers, pulping books, and silencing inconvenient reports make that a wholly unrealistic expectation.What really needs to happen is a change in the law. Why has England clung until now with such tenacity to rules and procedures which chill those who speak out about issues that are often, clearly, in the public interest? There was, as far as I could see, only one MP at the launch of today's report, and parliament's failure to act so far remains a mystery.But for once the solution is simple. MPs need to take up today's report. They can't argue. Even Carter Ruck agree.LawPublishingMedia lawAfua Hirschguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Holiday Gift Guide: Unforgettable Books for Those You Remember The New York Times’s book critics share their favorites from the last year. feeds.nytimes.com |
Books for Christmas: Food and cookery roundup | Book reviews Many foodies are ending this year in a state of deep anticlimax. The banking crisis was meant to mark the end of money and meretricious vanities, dethroned at last by the earthy virtues of food production and honest labour. In the peak-oil, globally warmed apocalypse so eagerly anticipated, communities would revive hand-knitting and jam-making, and men would dream of standing guard over their allotments.Is this new engagement with essentials embraced by the world of food publishing? Not really. Phaidon offers us Coco: 10 World-Leading Masters Choose 100 Contemporary Chefs (£25), a doorstop of a book in which 10 über-chefs each choose 10 future stars from all corners of the earth. Their recipes may be of interest, but only of value to members of the club or trendspotters. Heston Blumenthal returns with a slimmed-down The Fat Duck Cookbook (Bloomsbury, £35), still a giant by any other measure, portraying the chef as superman, with never a nod to his rather less than supermannish encounter with food poisoning earlier this year. His recipes will not be cooked at home, but study is rewarded by many helpful tips (for example how best to clarify stock, or the virtues of slow cooking). His memoir is inspiriting, but the accompanying art is seriously dire.For many, the real essential at this time of year is how best to cook the turkey. Roll up Delia's Happy Christmas (Ebury Press, £25) – possible subtitle "nine more ways with cranberries". Its popularity might imply that Christmas dinner is the only meal its readers ever expect to worry about. She has already made this one earlier, in 1990, and has recycled the instructions, timetables and shopping lists, as well as a fair few of the recipes, now wrapped in a sparkling new parcel of extra meals to fill out the holiday period. Would we follow Delia at home? Now you ask, never in a month of Sundays. But the other recipes, the supporting cast, are nicely comforting and enjoyable.Many find the warm, affecting prose of Nigel Slater an inspiration, though cynics think it flirts with pretension ("I was taught to make pastry by the open window, so I could smell the green prickle of spring as I rubbed the butter into the flour . . ."). In Tender, Volume I, A Cook and his Vegetable Patch (Fourth Estate, £30), he manages astonishing prolixity in pursuit of very few greens. He would like us to think he grew them all, but admits in his foreword that they mostly came from Fern Verrow Biodynamic Farm in Herefordshire. Is this a cook's equivalent of greenwash?A lighter tone, and welcome for it, is adopted by Simon Hopkinson in The Vegetarian Option (Quadrille, £20). Chicken stock as his second recipe has to be a tease, and vegetarians will be disappointed by the somewhat old-fashioned dairy and egg approach to their dietary choice. However, those who seek good ideas for non-meat dishes will be happily satisfied. Carnivores, on the other hand, may be more content to follow Jamie Oliver to Jamie's America (Michael Joseph, £26), thus sampling alligator, surf 'n' turf, pork and beans, and much more. The food is heroically messy, the recipes a jumble, much like Jamie's own view of the country, a melting-pot of peoples and traditions (mostly with a chilli thrown in). The urgent, ingenuous cameraderie sits uneasily with the canny management of a career and enterprise that earn millions per annum.There are many, many households who will opt every day – for reasons of ease, convenience and economy – for some sort of roast or baked fish or meat. The answer to their prayers may lie in Rôtis (Murdoch, £17.99) from the French chef Stéphane Reynaud, whose idiosyncratic work has been in evidence for a few years now. Rather than the manual of plain roasting which the title might imply, it offers a few dozen brilliant ideas and combinations for pot roasts (and roasted vegetables too). All this is true bliss to vary the endless round of cooking for a family. There is one sad reservation: his timings are worryingly brief, his ovens disturbingly cool. Our resulting domestic debate on the difference between raw and cooked venison would have done the late Lévi-Strauss proud.So what might be the killer cookbook present of the season? I suggest two. The first is the American chef Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc At Home (Artisan, £40) – Ad Hoc is the name of his family-style restaurant. This both suffers and benefits from an all-American seriousness about the business of cooking. It is many leagues beyond Jamie's lug it and see. But the recipes are gold-dust (though not boring) and the instructions, if carefully attended to, will make you a better cook. The second is Ginette Mathiot's I Know How to Cook (Phaidon, £24.95), first published in 1932 and brought up to date by Clotilde Dusoulier. A further instalment in Phaidon's programme to bring us classics from the nations of Europe, this one was written by a home economist and went on to sell millions. It is not ground-breaking, nor is it terribly instructive, but it is a perfect repository of simple, conservative French home cooking. One to shelve next to Constance Spry.It saddens me that so few English cookery books eschew the modern mishmash and multicultural blend. All the more reason, therefore, to greet Peter Brears's account of Traditional Food in Shropshire (Excellent Press, £19.95) with rousing cheers. He'll teach you to stuff a boar's head, or he'll tell you of kitchens and dishes of past centuries, all leavened with illustration and quotation. A wake-up call after a long night of risottos, chowders, salsas and tortillas.Tom Jaine runs Prospect Books, a specialist food imprint.guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
First novels from Simon Lelic, Nadifa Mohamed, Alan Monaghan and Ru Freeman Catherine Taylor's choice of first novelsRupture, by Simon Lelic (Picador, £12.99)When misfit teacher Samuel Szajkowski interrupts a school assembly by shooting dead a colleague and three pupils before killing himself, it seems a tragic but relatively straightforward case for the CID. Yet detective Lucia May, under pressure to wrap things up, feels an uncomfortable affinity with the awkward loner, and against intense opposition persists with the investigation. Tormented by students and teachers alike, in much the same way that Lucia is taunted by her all-male team, Szajkowski apparently just snapped. The school, led by autocratic head Travis, is content to have him branded a psychopath; but Lucia gradually uncovers institutionalised bullying, and with it the true target of Szjakowski's gun. Set during a stultifying London heatwave, this is a disturbingly realistic, taut piece of writing.Black Mamba Boy, by Nadifa Mohamed (HarperCollins, £12.99)Mohamed has turned her researches into the life of her father – a Somali who ended up in postwar Hull – into a compelling account of the refugee experience. Mixing startling lyricism and sheer brutality, she plunges into the chattering, viscous heat and "hyena darkness" of Aden, 1935, in her portrayal of Jama, a young street boy. His nomadic father abandoned the child and his mother, who dies in squalor; but Jama, cheeky and resourceful, scavenges, steals and works where and how he can, along with friends Shidane and Abdi. However, Mussolini's forces are making inroads into Abyssinia, and for the next 10 years Jama's journey will take him across a ravaged landscape. His sufferings are too relentless and dehumanising to be called mere hardship – this is a significant, affecting book of the dispossessed.The Soldier's Song, by Alan Monaghan (Pan Macmillan, £11.99)Monaghan's debut is less sentimental than its title suggests. Stephen Ryan, a promising mathematician from a working-class Dublin family, joins the army when war breaks out in 1914. This increases the antipathy already existing between him and younger brother Joe, a member of the republican volunteer Citizen Army opposing home rule. Stephen distinguishes himself as a troop leader and sharpshooter in Gallipoli; while on leave, and regarded as an Irish mercenary fighting for the British, he witnesses the Easter rising and Joe's capture and internment. Awarded the military cross, Stephen ploughs on – sustained by letters from suffragette Lillian – until he faces the horror of Ypres. His story is ably told, though Joe's participation becomes more shadowy. The novel's denouement points the way to a possible sequel focusing on the next chapter of Irish history.A Disobedient Girl, by Ru Freeman (Viking, £12.99)Two intersecting narratives from Sri Lanka give a rich overview of the role of women against a shifting political backdrop. Latha, an orphan of ambiguous origins, is born to serve in the household of the Vithanage family as companion to her contemporary, Thara. The pair form a fierce friendship, but as the girls grow older, tensions escalate. Thara marries Gehan, whom Latha loves, while Latha continues as a domestic servant, emotionally and socially disenfranchised, yet refusing to conform. In a different time and place, Biso, ostracised from her community, flees a violent husband. Labelled a whore, she is continually on the move towards normality and solace. This is a dense, involving read, although the pace is disappointingly leisurely.Fictionguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Erich Segal obituary Classics scholar whose multi-faceted career was dominated by his 1970 novel Love StoryThe American writer Erich Segal, who has died of a heart attack aged 72, will be best, and most misleadingly, remembered as the author of Love Story (1970). The success he earned from his first novel and its Hollywood film adaptation would be accolade enough for most authors. But while it made him rich, the skewed fame that it brought him shouldered aside a litany of other accomplishments: as classics scholar and teacher, literary critic and sports commentator, essayist and scriptwriter, historian and practitioner of comedy.When Erich wrote the book that changed his life, he was 32. He was a classics professor at Yale University, having earned his master's and PhD from Harvard four years earlier. He left Harvard as class poet and "Latin salutary orator", a twin honour equalled only by one other student, TS Eliot. In his academic career, Erich taught Latin and Greek literature not only at Yale, but at Harvard and Princeton and, upon moving to London with his British wife in the 1980s, at Wolfson College, Oxford.But he had always wanted to write. At Harvard, he co-authored the annual Hasty Pudding theatrical production. Alongside his teaching, he had notched up several Hollywood screenwriting credits, including on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968) – where the imprint of the rabbi's son was particularly evident in his mischievously inserted line: "Funny, you don't look blue-ish". The Fab Four didn't get it. But Erich insisted: "Trust me, they'll laugh." And they did.He wrote Love Story over his Christmas break in 1969. By the end of the following year, his bestselling book and box-office-topping film about love and bereavement had made him a celebrity. Its most famous line, "love means never having to say you're sorry", instantly entered popular culture. He not only became a regular on TV chatshows but, as an accomplished marathon runner and all-round sports fan, was enlisted by the ABC network to join its commentary team for a string of Olympic Games.He went on to write more than half a dozen other novels. All were as deftly woven around love stories as the first. But all dealt with other themes, too: class and family, academic infighting and, inevitably, religion.neErich was not only the son of a prominent New York rabbi. He was the grandson of an august rabbinical figure from Vilnius, a city so steeped in religious tradition and disputation that it was known as the "Jerusalem" of Lithuania. Erich was born in Brooklyn. He attended a Jewish religious school, or yeshiva. His father had always hoped, and no doubt expected, that Erich would become a rabbi. But when he was a teenager, they came to a deal. He would be allowed to attend the excellent local state school, as long as he agreed to spend evenings studying the Bible at the city's Jewish Theological Seminary.His father was a Conservative rabbi, part of a religious movement that combined emphasis on Jewish learning and tradition, and a wider engagement with modern society and culture than in Orthodox Judaism. Erich, whose mastery of Hebrew equalled his command of Latin and Greek, never lost his interest and joy in Judaism. The annual Passover Seder meals in his London home were not only unfailingly moving – a gathering of family and of a diverse circle of friends united in shared enjoyment of Erich's warmth, humour and generosity. They represented, with a mix of references ranging from Hebraic to Shakespearean, an astonishing, though always self-deprecating, display of erudition.For the final quarter-century of his life, he suffered from Parkinson's disease, which limited his movement in his last few years, though never his remarkable mind – exercised not only in his literary life, but in a continued engagement in wider cultural, and political, issues.During the US presidential election of 2000, he had the bizarre experience of watching two of his former students, Al Gore and George W Bush, vie for the Oval Office. Gore had been the slightly better student, he recalled, though neither of them was exactly a scholar-in-waiting. Despite inevitable phone calls from American journalists, he tried heroically to stay out of the fray – especially after Gore hinted publicly that he and his wife Tipper had been the models for Love Story. In fact, if any of his students had helped him model the characters, it was a Gore classmate, the actor Tommy Lee Jones. But Erich decided that not commenting would mean never having to say he was sorry.He continued to write as well. A few years back, he teamed up with his friend Jack Rosenthal to produce a new English translation of the opening Friday-night Hebrew prayer for the West London Reform Synagogue.His last major book was not a novel but a scholarly work. Its genesis lay in his Harvard PhD thesis four decades earlier. Called The Death of Comedy (2001), it traced the history of laugh-making, and of dirty jokes, from the ancient Greeks through to Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove. The thesis was that the 20th century had killed off comedy. It was a tantalising argument. But Erich never really believed it. "These things go in cycles," he remarked after the book was published. Comedy was only sleeping. And, he would add, with artists like Rosenthal, it never dozed off at all.It never left Erich either. It was present in his family, with friends, and perhaps most of all, in the gentle fun with which he saw himself. He was proud of his novels. But when asked by one interviewer to describe his literary life, he quipped: "I always had artistic aspirations, although not, I hope, pretensions." Writing was what he did, what he was. But the novels were only part of it. "Remember," he added, the academic in him suddenly resurfacing, "even Machiavelli wrote three comedies."He is survived by his wife and editorial collaborator, Karen, and two daughters, Francesca and Miranda.• Erich Segal, writer and classics scholar, born 16 June 1937; died 17 January 2010United StatesJudaismClassicsNed Temkoguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |