Enjoy Life

Autumn Reads

The pick of the latest hardbacks and paperbacks, reviewed by Simon Evans

A Voyage Around The Queen, by Craig Brown

With his books on Princess Margaret and The Beatles, Craig Brown almost single-handedly reinvented the biography. Rather than presenting chronological accounts of his subjects, Brown instead adopted a pick-and-mix approach, offering wide-ranging, bite-sized snapshots that, in their way, proved to be just as revealing, if not more so, than more conventional biographies, as well as being well suited for an age of ever-shrinking attention spans.

Brown’s method works equally well with this biography of our late Queen, probably the most written about person of the past 100 years and of whom, you would think there was little new to say.

Not so. Drawing on a mind-blowing array of sources, the book ranges over a wide range of subjects, from the Queen’s beloved Corgis and the fascinating life of the renowned lookalike Jeannette Charles to some of the more dubious royal guests entertained at Buckingham Palace during Queen Elizabeth’s reign; there is even an amusing section on how the Queen used to appear in people’s dreams.

Brown is at his best, however, when introducing a personal element, including his bizarre obsession with bidding at auction for a piece of Princess Anne’s wedding cake, a strange encounter with Princess Diana’s stepfather on the day of her death, and an elegiac visit to Sandringham after the Queen’s passing.

There are insights, too, into the Queen’s personality; most notably her capacity for both kindness and indifference – the treatment handed out to her former horse-racing trainer makes for uncomfortable reading.

More broadly, it’s interesting how apparently centuries-old traditions can sometimes have an element of pantomime about them, Brown pointing out that the investiture of King Charles as Prince of Wales in 1969 had about as much grounding in our history as Prince Edward’s late unlamented TV show It’s A Royal Knockout.

With his mixture of scholarly erudition and a journalistic lightness of touch, Craig Brown has provided perhaps the fullest, most rounded – and funniest – portrait of the late Queen we are ever likely to get.

Published by 4th Estate Price £25 Pages 672 ISBN 9780008557492

The Hotel Avocado, by Bob Mortimer

A slight warning sign with this follow-up to comedian Bob Mortimer’s debut novel, The Satsuma Complex, is that it’s about 100 pages longer than its predecessor, a victim, it would appear, of post-bestseller bloat. Hopefully an editor or two will be on hand to prevent JK Rowling-like levels of pagination excess as the series progresses for Bob is at his best when the plot is streamlined and works as a vehicle for his surreal flights of fancy.

Thankfully there are plenty of these as Bob’s central character, a put-upon lawyer (based you suspect on Bob’s former life as a solicitor for hire), is faced with several awkward, life-changing dilemmas, most of them centred on the hotel of the title, which his girlfriend is doing up on Brighton seafront.

There’s some great characters, the wonderfully named Mr Sequence among them, who could have walked fully formed out of a Vic and Bob sketch, not to mention a talking squirrel and a surly, cynical pigeon who pitches in occasionally to help with the narration.

How much you enjoy the novel really depends on how much you buy into Bob’s ability to find the surreal and strange amidst the banal humdrum of the everyday (and vice versa). Fans and the casually curious shouldn’t be disappointed.

Published by Gallery UK Price £22 Pages 416 ISBN 9781398529625

Remembering Live Aid, by Andrew Wild

July 13, 1985 was Live Aid day, when artists around the world came together to raise money to help provide relief for the starving people of Africa. It was also the day that pop music grew up; acquiring a conscience and setting egos aside in the cause of a greater good as well as selling records by the crateful and almost single-handedly creating the heritage pop industry and stadium rock.

Those unintended consequences of Live Aid only became evident in retrospect, and Andrew Wild’s book manages to both capture the excitement (and occasional silliness) of the day as it panned out, as well as considering its wider implications. Each artist who performed in London or Philadelphia (or both in the case of the indefatigable Phil Collins) has their own entry, detailing what they played and their memories of the occasion. For some – Status Quo, Queen – it opened the door to a new chapter in their careers, while for others, most notably the reformed Led Zeppelin, it was an unmitigated disaster and closed the door on future reunions for decades to come.

Never losing sight of the day’s absurdities, Wild provides an excellent, dispassionate commentary on Live Aid as it unfolded. It was, and remains, a day like no other.

Published by Sonicbond Price £16.99 Pages 128 ISBN 9781789523287

Hope I Get Old Before I Die, by David Hepworth

With their regular publication at this time of year, and recognisable orange and white cover art, David Hepworth’s books have taken on the quality of annuals for music fans of a certain age. And they are just as reliably entertaining as those old Eagle and Beano books from our childhood, full of irreverent, on-the-money anecdotes drawn from a lifetime spent writing and broadcasting about music.

The theme of this latest deep dive into pop’s history is its transformation from something regarded as trashy, disposable and the preserve of the young to its status today as a generation-spanning heritage industry.

Hepworth locates Live Aid or, more particularly, Queen’s evening set as part of that remarkable day, as the point at which pop became middle-aged, a Spectacle to be consumed like any other branch of the entertainment industry.

Hepworth was very much part of Live Aid, he and his Old Grey Whistle Test colleagues having been tasked with covering this momentous occasion, something akin, in retrospect, to giving coverage of the King’s Coronation over to Look East. Not that Hepworth, Mark Ellen and Andy Kershaw didn’t do a great job; it was just a sign of what little regard the BBC paid to pop music at the time.

Live Aid changed all that, Hepworth points out, and made stars like David Bowie, Elton John and Paul McCartney realise that rather than gently fading away, as seemed to be their destiny, pop could provide a comfortable pension plan well into their dotage.

As with all of Hepworth’s books there’s some great stories, especially the heart-warming story of the failed pop star who became a millionaire overnight thanks to Madonna. There’s also a reminder that for some, such as the The Who’s John Entwistle, the life of the late middle-aged rock star could be an exercise in boredom, his collection of 250 guitars being “so vast as to be regarded as a cry for help”.

Apart from looking at the phenomenon of the elderly rock star, Hepworth also considers what drives even the most unlikely of bands to reunite – other than the obvious financial imperative – the recent tawdry reunion of Oasis, which obviously came too late for Hepworth’s book, being a particularly timely case in point.

Modestly Hepworth plays down his own not insignificant role in pop’s transformation into a heritage industry, having co-founded the influential magazines Q and Mojo. It’s hard to imagine now, but he tells of the agonising that went on over whether to put Paul McCartney on the front cover of Q’s first issue back in 1986. How times have changed.

Published by Transworld Price £25 Pages 432 ISBN 9781787632783

Also recommended…

TV presenter Nicki Chapman’s early career was spent at the sharp end of the music industry, promoting and managing some of the biggest names of the Eighties and Nineties, including the Spice Girls, Take That, Phil Collins and David Bowie. So Tell Me What You Want (Sphere, £22) is her riveting account of those years, fighting to be heard and having to ride the highs and lows of an unforgiving business. And Dolly Parton: All The Songs (Black Dog and Leventhal, £50), by Simon Benoit, Damien Somville and Lalie Walker, is a lavish, illustrated guide to every track and album recorded during the country star’s long and distinguished career…

Two young Liverpool women yearn for the comforts of home when they are evacuated to rural Yorkshire in Wartime In The Dales, by Diane Allen (Pan, £8.99), and The Ballroom Girls Hit The Big Time, by Jenny Holmes (Penguin, £8.99) is the final novel in the Blackpool-set Second World War saga, following three girls who find solace from their woes on the dancefloor of the Winter Gardens…

It’s 1915 and there’s a suspected killer on board one of the world’s most luxurious ocean liners, but why are they on board and what is their deadly mission? The answers are to be found in RL Graham’s absorbing historical thriller Death On The Lusitania (Pan, £9.99), and in Kate Atkinson’s ingeniously plotted Death At The Sign of the Rook (Doubleday, £22) sleuth Jackson Brodie returns and finds himself at the centre of a classic country house mystery…

Fatal Gambit (Quercus, £20) is the latest high-tension thriller from David Lagercrantz, author of the fourth and fifth instalments in the Millennium series of novels. Highland detective Jack Logan returns to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a bunch of social media gurus in JD Kirk’s A Killer of Influence (Canelo, £14.99), and The Last Time I Saw Him (Wildfire, £9.99) is Rachel Abbott’s latest twisty whodunit, the fourth in the excellent Stephanie King series…

In A Piece of Work (Abacus, £25), Simon Russell Beale draws on his distinguished career, playing many of the key Shakespearean roles, to get under the skin of the Bard, while also giving fascinating insights into how he personally has gone about approaching his characterisations, from an episode of Coronation Street to a visit to elderly patients in a local hospital…

Great new anthologies from Batsford, edited by Jane McMorland Hunter, include A Happy Poem to Start Every Day (£25), featuring joyful verse for every morning of the year, a Bedside Companion for Travel Lovers (£22.95), featuring daily reflections on memorable journeys and destinations, and A Nature Poem for Every Autumn Evening (£14.99), which features poems for the season ranging from Vita Sackville-West’s ode to the passing of summer to John Clare’s celebration of September rain…

From the mountains of Kashmir to a repurposed castle in the west of Ireland, Earthly Utopias, by Yolanda Zappaterra (Frances Lincoln, £30) tours some of the world’s most magnificent sacred gardens, and in The Atlas of Paranormal Places (Ivy Press, £22), Evelyn Hollow goes in search of locations associated with supernatural beliefs, strange happenings, legends and folklore…

In Sally Page’s heart-warming debut novel, The Secrets of Flowers (HarperCollins, £9.99), widow Emma finds solace both in working at her local garden centre and exploring the story of a young stewardess who had been tasked with arranging the on-board flowers for the Titanic’s fatal journey…

Comedian Al Murray’s passion for military history, in particular that of the Second World War, is reflected in his new book Arnhem: Black Tuesday (Bantam, £25), which tells the story of the British military’s doomed attempt to build a bridgehead across the Rhine in September 1944 and thereby bring about a swift end to the war. Murray is no dilettante, and by focussing on the events of that single day through the eyes of the British military without the benefit of historical perspective provides a refreshingly original new slant on what came to be known as Black Tuesday. And in Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses (Headline, £30), MG Sheftall draws on the testimony of survivors to provide an extraordinary minute-by-minute account of August 6, 1945 and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima…

It is in 1792 and revolution is in the air in The Armour of Light (Pan, £9.99), the latest in Ken Follett’s series of Kingsbridge novels, and in Jack Sheffield’s new novel University Challenges (Bantam, £18.99), Dr Tom Frith begins his second year as a tutor at the University of Eboracum facing a number of challenges, not least acting as mentor to the feisty Dr Rose Tremaine…

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