PD Smith

As well as my month­ly paper­back reviews for Guardian Books, I’ve writ­ten a review for the TLS of Daniela Krien’s new nov­el, about a cou­ple redis­cov­er­ing their love for each oth­er, and a brief piece about the won­der­ful Mar­tin Beck series of detec­tive nov­els for the Guardian.

Enjoy!

The Guardian asked me to con­tribute to a month­ly piece on what books writ­ers and read­ers have read recent­ly. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it reflects my favourite sub­ject of the last few years — crime and detec­tive fic­tion.

By the way, the book I’ve been writ­ing on this sub­ject has been much delayed by, well, life. But the inves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing and I’m work­ing on the final chap­ter!

This is the link to the Guardian col­umn — What We’re Read­ing.

I’ve reviewed five recent books on Albert Ein­stein for the Times Lit­er­ary Sup­ple­ment this week.

These are the books: Michael D. Gordin, Ein­stein in Bohemia; Andrew Robin­son, Ein­stein on the Run: How Britain saved the world’s great­est sci­en­tist; Allen Ester­son, David C. Cas­sidy and Ruth Lewin Sime, Einstein’s Wife: The real sto­ry of Mil­e­va Ein­stein-Mar­ić; Matthew Stan­ley, Einstein’s War: How rel­a­tiv­i­ty con­quered nation­al­ism and shook the world; Daniel Ken­nefick, No Shad­ow of a Doubt: The 1919 eclipse that con­firmed Einstein’s the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty.

I’ve writ­ten about Ein­stein’s life myself, albeit briefly, but it’s fas­ci­nat­ing see­ing how much inter­est there still is in Ein­stein — the man and the sci­ence — after so many years.

You can read the review on the TLS site. But here’s a para­graph from my piece as a taster:

Before Ein­stein depart­ed for Amer­i­ca on Octo­ber 7, he said “no mat­ter how long I live I shall nev­er for­get the kind­ness which I have received from the peo­ple of Eng­land”. Once ensconced in the Insti­tute of Advanced Study at Prince­ton, Ein­stein nev­er returned to Britain. Most of his clos­est friends in Amer­i­ca remained Euro­peans though. V. S. Pritch­ett vis­it­ed him there: “The atmos­phere of Prince­ton is exem­plary and deco­rous: Einstein’s laugh­ter blew all that away”. It was, he said “a laugh that had two thou­sand years of Europe in it”.

I’ve writ­ten a piece for today’s Guardian Review on our endur­ing fas­ci­na­tion with the homes and haunts of our cre­ative heroes. It’s part­ly a review of Lives of Hous­es, a won­der­ful col­lec­tion of essays edit­ed by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee. But it also draws on my expe­ri­ence of work­ing with my father in the 1980s on our book Writ­ers in Sus­sex.

Christo­pher Fry, who lived at East Dean in the Sus­sex Downs, was kind enough to write a per­son­al and evoca­tive fore­word to our book (which you can read here). It was clear from talk­ing to Christo­pher Fry that he was delight­ed to dis­cov­er a lit­er­ary dimen­sion to some of his favourite land­scapes. In 1936 he and his wife had lived in an old mill-house at Cole­man’s Hatch: “We knew that not far away were the AA Milnes at Cotch­ford Farm. What we didn’t know was that twen­ty-three years ear­li­er W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound had rent­ed a cot­tage even near­er to where we were liv­ing. Every time we had dri­ven to For­est Row we had passed the end of the lane which would have led us to Stone Cot­tage.”

You can see some of my pho­tos for the book on Flickr. There’s also a piece I wrote about Writ­ers in Sus­sex here.

It’s 2020 already and I realise I haven’t post­ed here for ages. I blame Twit­ter. And the num­ber of reviews I’m writ­ing now (thanks Guardian!)…

But 2019 was cer­tain­ly a great year for books — or rather, for oth­er peo­ple’s books, as the amount of review­ing I’m doing has rather delayed my own book on detec­tives, which I am still writ­ing, thanks to the patience of my edi­tor…

Any­way, just in case you missed any of my reviews, here are some of the best ones from 2019:

A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar

Where Shall We Run to? by Alan Gar­ner

Out­post by Dan Richards

Excel­lent Essex by Gillian Dar­ley

The Gar­den Jun­gle by Dave Goul­son

An Eco­nom­ic His­to­ry of the Eng­lish Gar­den by Rod­er­ick Floud

And here are some of my favourite detec­tive reads this year:

Black Mon­ey by Ross Mac­Don­ald (1965)

Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo (1995) 

Gno­mon by Nick Hark­away (2017)

1974 by David Peace (1999)

Blue­bird, Blue­bird by Atti­ca Locke (2017)

Hawksmoor by Peter Ack­royd (1985)

And, to fin­ish, some great lines from those books:

“Just a banal gang­ster sto­ry. One more sto­ry and sure­ly not the last. Mon­ey and pow­er. The sto­ry of mankind. With hatred of the world as the only sce­nario.” (Total Chaos)

“The human con­di­tion is most accu­rate­ly chron­i­cled in pulp, I think.” (Gno­mon)

“He had for­got­ten that the most ele­men­tal instinct in human nature is not hate but love, the for­mer inex­tri­ca­bly linked to the lat­ter.” (Blue­bird, Blue­bird)