PD Smith

Since my last post, the rather sad saga of my addic­tion to books has con­tin­ued unabat­ed. I was unable to say no to four new non­fic­tion books that the Guardian offered me, as well as sev­er­al paper­backs.

Ground Work: Writ­ings on Places and Peo­ple, edit­ed by Tim Dee (Jonathan Cape, £16.99), is a remark­able col­lec­tion of spe­cial­ly com­mis­sioned work by aca­d­e­mics, poets, biog­ra­phers, artists, nat­u­ral­ists, nov­el­ists and his­to­ri­ans about the impor­tance of place. “Place-mak­ing is a sig­nal of our species”, says Dee: “any­where can be a some­where”.

These pieces illus­trate how the slow but con­stant accre­tion of expe­ri­ences and sen­sa­tions turn the way-sta­tions of our hum­drum lives – whether in cities, sub­ur­bia, or rur­al – into dense sites of mem­o­ry and sig­nif­i­cance. It’s a won­der­ful mix of schol­ar­ship, his­to­ry and acute obser­va­tion, touch­ing on themes that are at once intense­ly per­son­al and uni­ver­sal. There are stand-out essays by Philip Hoare, Mark Cock­er and Ken Wor­pole.

All the Pieces Mat­ter: The Inside Sto­ry of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams (No Exit Press, £12.99) is a superb col­lec­tion of inter­views about the mak­ing of The Wire, one of my favourite tele­vi­sion series.

The six­ty episodes of The Wire from 2002 to 2008 were ini­tial­ly large­ly ignored by crit­ics and award-givers alike. Now the series is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est tele­vi­sion shows ever made. Its cre­ator was the for­mer Bal­ti­more crime jour­nal­ist David Simon. Togeth­er with his co-cre­ator Ed Burns, who had spent twen­ty years in the Bal­ti­more police, and a team of writ­ers which includ­ed the nov­el­ists Den­nis Lehane, Richard Price and George Pele­canos, Simon craft­ed an immense­ly pow­er­ful series that was char­ac­terised by its remark­able real­ism, its human­i­ty and out­stand­ing writ­ing.

The ini­tial wire­tap sto­ry­line was based on a 1984 inves­ti­ga­tion into the drug king­pin Melvin “Lit­tle” Williams, led by Burns and cov­ered by Simons in the Bal­ti­more Sun.

Despite its nat­u­ral­ism, none of the dia­logue was impro­vised. Accord­ing to Wen­dell Pierce (Detec­tive William “Bunk” More­land), “they were on us about the words, man. Every piece is impor­tant. ‘All the pieces mat­ter’. That was the mantra.”

Com­plex, nov­el­is­tic and pro­found­ly mov­ing, in The Wire Simon took the police dra­ma to a whole new lev­el. Essen­tial read­ing for any­one who loved the series.

Room to Dream, by David Lynch and Kris­tine McKen­na (Canon­gate, £25), fea­tures an approach to life writ­ing “that some might find strange”. This hybrid form com­bines mem­oir and biog­ra­phy: each of McKenna’s chap­ters is fol­lowed by one by Lynch on the same peri­od, “hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with his own biog­ra­phy”. The result is a remark­able por­trait of one of cinema’s great auteurs. And Twin Peaks also hap­pens to be anoth­er of my oth­er favourite TV series.

Those who have col­lab­o­rat­ed with Lynch in front and behind the cam­era have found the expe­ri­ence immense­ly reward­ing. Accord­ing to Sis­sy Spacek: “once peo­ple work with David they want to work with him again and get near the flame”.

His sur­re­al and often dark vision of mod­ern Amer­i­can life always offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty of redemp­tion and enlight­en­ment. Lynch is a fer­vent believ­er in the pow­er of med­i­ta­tion to change lives and for Robert Forster – who plays Sher­iff Frank Tru­man in Twin Peaks – there is a tran­scen­den­tal qual­i­ty in his films: “he asks us to find that con­nec­tion to the eter­nal in our­selves”.

At times Room to Dream feels a bit like a vale­dic­to­ry Festschrift, but it undoubt­ed­ly offers a mem­o­rable insight into Lynch’s intense cre­ativ­i­ty, from his paint­ing and music to fur­ni­ture design­ing (“I just don’t see a lot of fur­ni­ture that thrills my soul”). As McKen­na says, “to a remark­able degree his life is an exer­cise in pure cre­ativ­i­ty”.

A part of me (the part that writes reviews) thinks that 900-page books should be banned. I’d make an excep­tion though for A Cer­tain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle, by Julian Jack­son (Allen Lane, £35).

To tell the life of de Gaulle is also to chart the his­to­ry of mod­ern France and in this suit­ably mon­u­men­tal biog­ra­phy, Jack­son por­trays his sub­ject as a com­plex and con­tra­dic­to­ry char­ac­ter. Accord­ing to Jack­son, “he was a sol­dier who spent most of his career fight­ing the army; a con­ser­v­a­tive who often talked like a rev­o­lu­tion­ary; a man of pas­sion who found it almost impos­si­ble to express emo­tions”.

He dis­trust­ed both Britain (“per­fid­i­ous”) and Amer­i­ca (“it has no depth nor roots”). He once quipped that dur­ing the Sec­ond World War the British based the Free French in Carl­ton Gar­dens because it is “a dead end, with the only way out through Water­loo Place”. Through­out de Gaulle’s life, in his writ­ings and in his actions, his belief in the unique­ness of his nation remained undimmed: “France is the light of the world, her genius is to light up the uni­verse.”

Last week I had the plea­sure of read­ing Let­ters to Change the World: From Pankhurst to Orwell, edit­ed by Travis Elbor­ough (Ebury, £14.99). This is an inspir­ing col­lec­tion of more than six­ty let­ters, from the begin­ning of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry to the present day, which expose injus­tice, chal­lenge per­ni­cious ideas or cel­e­brate the ide­al­ism which is our species’ unique qual­i­ty.

Many are hum­bling. They include Ron Ridenhour’s 1969 let­ter to mem­bers of Con­gress and to Pres­i­dent Nixon expos­ing the My Lai mas­sacre that had occurred the year before. A heli­copter gun­ner in Viet­nam, Riden­hour had heard rumours about the mas­sacre from fel­low sol­diers who had wit­nessed it, con­vinc­ing him that “some­thing rather dark and bloody” took place.

This “con­sci­en­tious cit­i­zen” was so appalled by accounts of hun­dreds of men, women and chil­dren being shot in cold blood that he could not remain silent. In his let­ter he quot­ed Win­ston Churchill: “A coun­try with­out a con­science is a coun­try with­out a soul and a coun­try with­out a soul is a coun­try that can­not sur­vive.”

Writ­ten with deep emo­tion and mea­sured rea­son, these elo­quent, pow­er­ful and coura­geous let­ters speak to essen­tial themes of human­i­ty and jus­tice. At a time of great polit­i­cal uncer­tain­ty and indeed when let­ter writ­ing is almost a for­got­ten art, this col­lec­tion – which should have pride of place in every library – demon­strates the vital and endur­ing impor­tance of speak­ing truth to pow­er.

Among the best paper­backs I’ve read recent­ly are these three gems:

Anoth­er Kyoto, by Alex Kerr with Kathy Arlyn Sokol (Pen­guin, £9.99)
Filled with mem­o­rable insights into Japan (from the city’s ubiq­ui­tous gates to the soft tata­mi mats found in near­ly every home), Kerr and Sokol’s book – beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed by Tet­su­ji Fuji­hara – pro­vides an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to the sub­lime city of Kyoto.

Applied Bal­lar­dian­ism: Mem­oir from a Par­al­lel Uni­verse, by Simon Sel­l­ars (Urba­nom­ic, £18.99)
This bril­liant­ly writ­ten aut­ofic­tion is osten­si­bly a mem­oir of the author’s obses­sion with JG Bal­lard and his attempt to write a doc­tor­al the­sis on the sub­ject. The the­sis remains unwrit­ten. Instead we have Applied Bal­lar­dian­ism – a won­der­ful­ly orig­i­nal mix of cul­tur­al the­o­ry, lit­er­ary exe­ge­sis, trav­el­ogue and psy­chopatho­log­i­cal mem­oir. As Bal­lard said, “Dan­ger­ous bends ahead. Slow down.”

The Epic City: The World on the Streets of Cal­cut­ta, by Kushana­va Choud­hury (Blooms­bury, £8.99)
Choudhury’s mem­o­rably evoca­tive book reveals the rich cul­ture of this teem­ing and trou­bled com­mu­ni­ty, offer­ing a won­der­ful­ly vivid and per­son­al account of life in Cal­cut­ta, from adda (“the sweet Ben­gali pas­time of aim­less digres­sive con­ver­sa­tion”) and its addic­tive street food, to the bib­lio­phile delights of Col­lege Street, “not just a street but a labyrinth made of books”. A clas­sic urban read.

Hap­py read­ing, fel­low book addicts…

Sue Black has one of the most extra­or­di­nary and – it has to be said – unen­vi­able jobs. She’s a pro­fes­sor of anato­my and foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gy. The task of the foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist is to read the nar­ra­tive writ­ten into the body or skele­ton in order to recon­struct “the sto­ry of the life lived”. Her work takes her to war zones and to the after­math of dis­as­ters. She also helps the police iden­ti­fy bod­ies. It goes with­out say­ing that what she has to wit­ness is trau­mat­ic and Black admits she has seen col­leagues “haunt­ed” by their expe­ri­ences: “it has destroyed lives, rela­tion­ships and careers”.

At the scene of a mas­sacre in Koso­vo, where she was assist­ing in the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of bod­ies and the col­lec­tion of evi­dence of war crimes, a police­man broke down at the sight of a two-year-old girl who had been shot in cold blood. Pro­fes­sor Black – “the moth­er on the team” – hugged him: “hav­ing chinks in your armour isn’t always a sign of weak­ness. It is often a sign of human­i­ty.”

Black is often asked how she copes with the appalling things she has to wit­ness. “I have nev­er been spooked by the dead,” she replies. “It is the liv­ing who ter­ri­fy me.” She says she’s “hard as nails” and I believe her, although she does admit to being scared of rats. But despite its often grim con­tent, Black’s remark­able and utter­ly grip­ping account of her life and work – All That Remains: A Life in Death – man­ages to be sur­pris­ing­ly life-affirm­ing.

It is also a thought­ful yet down-to-earth med­i­ta­tion on our atti­tudes to death in the mod­ern world. Unlike most of us, Black doesn’t fear death: “thanks to her, I have enjoyed a long, pro­duc­tive and inter­est­ing career”. In fact she regards her own death as a “final adven­ture”, one she wants to expe­ri­ence and under­stand “as com­plete­ly as is human­ly pos­si­ble”.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, she intends to bequeath her body to a Scot­tish anato­my depart­ment, like the one in which she her­self has spent her work­ing life, and she writes with real pas­sion about “the mes­meris­ing beau­ty of human anato­my”. She even hopes to end up as an artic­u­lat­ed teach­ing skele­ton: “as bones have a very long shelf life, I could be hang­ing around for cen­turies, whether my stu­dents like it or not.”

In The Lost Boys, Gina Per­ry explores what the soci­ol­o­gist of sci­ence Bruno Latour calls the “Janus face” of sci­ence: the con­trast between the shiny pub­lic rela­tions image of white coats and hard facts, and the behind-the-scenes details of how sci­ence is made which, as Per­ry says, is “messier, some­times ugly, but always more inter­est­ing”.

Her sub­ject is the social psy­cho­log­i­cal exper­i­ments which Muzafer Sherif con­duct­ed in Amer­i­can sum­mer camps dur­ing the Cold War, using groups of eleven-year-old boys. Although they were the “cream of the crop” in their com­mu­ni­ties, Sherif showed in his 1954 exper­i­ment at Rob­bers Cave State Park, Okla­homa, how quick­ly these boys could degen­er­ate into “dis­turbed, vicious…wicked young­sters”.

Sherif spent his career study­ing the role of groups in direct­ing our behav­iour. He was fas­ci­nat­ed by “the pow­er of trib­al loy­al­ty, in-groups and out-groups, to shape our worlds”. Unlike ear­li­er attempts, his now-clas­sic 1954 exper­i­ment ran accord­ing to plan, with the two groups behav­ing like war­ring nation states and then being brought togeth­er to face a com­mon threat when the camp’s water sup­ply was cut off by a rock fall. Per­ry shows how every­thing was care­ful­ly stage-man­aged by Sherif and his team, with observers secret­ly record­ing the boys, pho­tograph­ing them and tak­ing hand­writ­ten notes of their behav­iour, like some ear­ly ver­sion of TV’s Big Broth­er.

Per­ry has pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten a study of Stan­ley Mil­gram’s con­tro­ver­sial obe­di­ence exper­i­ments and sees in Sherif’s work a sim­i­lar lack of inter­est in the poten­tial harm inflict­ed on his exper­i­men­tal sub­jects. The way the boys’ emo­tions and behav­iour was manip­u­lat­ed by the adults is undoubt­ed­ly dis­turb­ing.

She con­trasts the pub­lished results of the exper­i­ment at Rob­bers Cave with the raw data col­lect­ed at the three sum­mer camps used by Sherif and his teams. She also tracks down some of the par­tic­i­pants – “the lost boys” – who had no idea of the impor­tant role they played in the his­to­ry of social psy­chol­o­gy. Today some of the sub­jects feel used. “It was a crazy sit­u­a­tion run by crazy peo­ple,” says one. But Sherif’s assis­tant remains ide­al­is­tic: “We were fight­ing prej­u­dice.” Sherif lat­er boast­ed of “lab­o­ra­to­ry-like” con­di­tions. But Perry’s account amounts to a dev­as­tat­ing cri­tique of this sem­i­nal exper­i­ment, cast­ing doubt on how it was con­duct­ed and the objec­tiv­i­ty of the researchers.

In the end, how­ev­er, she offers a sym­pa­thet­ic por­trait of Sherif – a dri­ven, tem­pera­men­tal man – find­ing answers to his “lack of com­pas­sion” for the boys in his own trou­bled youth in Turkey. Flawed though it may be, Per­ry finds in his research an admirable desire to cre­ate a world in which “wounds were healed and what was lost was restored”, at a time when the only future was one of war and con­flict.

The writer and edi­tor of the New York Review of Books, Ian Buru­ma, “grew up with two cul­tures”. His father was a lapsed Dutch Protes­tant and his moth­er British, from an Anglo-Ger­man-Jew­ish fam­i­ly: “My des­tiny was to be half in, half out – of almost any­thing.” He always dreamed of escap­ing from the safe and dull cocoon of his upper-mid­dle-class child­hood in The Hague, “a world of gar­den sprin­klers, club ties, bridge par­ties and the sound of ten­nis balls in sum­mer”.

The oppor­tu­ni­ty to study in Tokyo on a schol­ar­ship at the film depart­ment of Nihon Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Art pro­vid­ed the per­fect way out, though Buru­ma admits that “Asia meant very lit­tle” to him beyond falling in love with the Japan­ese char­ac­ter Kyoko in Truffaut’s film Bed and Board (Domi­cile Con­ju­gal).

Buru­ma arrived in Tokyo in 1975, aged 23. Although he quick­ly tired of his film course, Buru­ma immersed him­self in the Japan­ese imag­i­na­tion and in this mem­oir of his six years in Japan he writes with real pas­sion for both Japan­ese movies and the avant-garde the­atre of the time. A Tokyo Romance is a won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive account of cul­tur­al life in Tokyo in the 1970s, rich with anec­dotes about the peo­ple he met and illus­trat­ed with his own strik­ing pho­tog­ra­phy, “the per­fect art for a voyeur danc­ing he explores the around the fringes”. In par­tic­u­lar, he explores the flight of his younger self from bour­geois respectabil­i­ty to the mys­te­ri­ous Oth­er of Japan­ese cul­ture with dry humour and real insight.

After six years in the coun­try, Buru­ma was forced to acknowl­edge that even though he spoke the lan­guage and fol­lowed the local cus­toms, he would always be an out­sider, or gai­jin (lit­er­al­ly, an “out­side per­son”): “every gai­jin in Japan must real­ize that a gai­jin he or she will always remain”. Some peo­ple, who had grown to love the coun­try, found this dif­fi­cult to accept. But Buru­ma – who grew up with a sense of being caught between worlds – found it lib­er­at­ing: as a stranger in a strange land, he no longer felt the need to con­form or even belong. When he even­tu­al­ly returned to Europe, he brought this “rad­i­cal auton­o­my” with him and he realis­es now that “Japan shaped me”.

I par­tic­u­lar­ly enjoyed Buruma’s mem­o­rable study and it made me want to imme­di­ate­ly book a flight to Tokyo, a city I fell in love with when I vis­it­ed a few years ago. The details of all three books, which I strong­ly rec­om­mend, are below, togeth­er with links to my reviews in the Guardian.

All That Remains: A Life in Death, by Sue Black (Dou­ble­day, £16.99) — Guardian review

The Lost Boys: Inside Muzafer Sherif’s Rob­bers Cave Exper­i­ment, by Gina Per­ry (Scribe, £14.99) — Guardian review

A Tokyo Romance: A Mem­oir, by Ian Buru­ma (Atlantic, £16.99) — Guardian review

I have to be hon­est and admit that I’m strug­gling a bit to keep up with review­ing, writ­ing and updat­ing my blog at the moment! Still bet­ter to have too much work, than not enough…

So in between try­ing to write my book on urban detec­tives for Blooms­bury (thanks for being so patient guys…), I’ve been read­ing a study of medieval bod­ies and a cou­ple of books on rur­al life for the Guardian, as well as one on the shape of things to come for the TLS.

Art his­to­ri­an Jack Hart­nel­l’s Medieval Bod­ies: Life, Death and Art in the Mid­dle Ages explores the medieval world-view through the body. Rather than a closed sys­tem, the body was seen as fun­da­men­tal­ly linked to the exter­nal world of mat­ter and spir­it: “under­stand­ing the body was just one part of an attempt to make sense of the uni­verse in its entire­ty”. The body was at the cen­tre of their phys­i­cal and meta­phys­i­cal world-view, an end­less­ly fecund source of metaphors and ideas around which their imag­i­na­tive and intel­lec­tu­al lives evolved.

Hartnell’s eru­dite yet live­ly prose, accom­pa­nied by beau­ti­ful colour illus­tra­tions, brings the Mid­dle Ages alive in a phys­i­cal, and almost vis­cer­al way. He high­lights the sur­pris­ing­ly deep cross-cul­tur­al links between Byzan­tium, Europe and Islam, and shows how phi­los­o­phy, art, reli­gion and prac­ti­cal knowl­edge about treat­ing wounds and ill­ness­es, as well as anatom­i­cal ideas, informed medieval atti­tudes and beliefs about the body. A tri­umph of his­tor­i­cal schol­ar­ship. My review is in Sat­ur­day’s Guardian.

Coun­try­side writer John Lewis-Stem­pel has writ­ten a beau­ti­ful book about a wood in Here­ford­shire which he man­aged for four years. Nature is not abstract in his writ­ing, but vis­cer­al. It’s a phys­i­cal pres­ence, some­times sen­su­al, some­times cru­el, but always full of won­der – from the “sad solil­o­quies” of the robin in Jan­u­ary to “a dead rab­bit rean­i­mat­ed by the mag­gots inside it”.

He has a won­der­ful way with words, and his descrip­tions of nature have a no-non­sense con­ci­sion that is remark­ably evoca­tive, from the “paper-rus­tle of rab­bits scut­tling across dry sycamore leaves” to “the hand-clap of pigeon wings”. You can read my review of The Wood here.

Mark Con­nel­l’s The Cow Book cov­ers a sim­i­lar sub­ject but in a very dif­fer­ent style. It’s a brood­ing, pow­er­ful mem­oir about a 29-year-old man’s return to the fam­i­ly farm in Ire­land and his dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with his morose and short-tem­pered father.

As well as a mem­oir, Connell’s book explores our rela­tion­ship with cat­tle, our com­pan­ions for some ten thou­sand years: “to speak of cat­tle is to speak of man”. From the ancient wild ox, the auroch, that appears in ancient cave art to the exter­mi­na­tion of the Amer­i­can buf­fa­lo by Euro­pean set­tlers and Robert Bakewell’s selec­tive breed­ing in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry that pro­duced the first beef cow and influ­enced Charles Darwin’s the­o­ry of nat­ur­al selec­tion.

It’s clear, though, that the strength and pow­er of this book lies not in nat­ur­al his­to­ry but in Connell’s deeply per­son­al account of try­ing to reassem­ble the pieces of his life after a peri­od of severe depres­sion, what he terms “the Past”. You can read my review at the Guardian.

Both these books about the coun­try­side are mem­o­rable and strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed. I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the pow­er­ful con­nec­tion to land­scape and nature that I’m find­ing in many new non-fic­tion books. It’s as if the nation whose peo­ple pio­neered the move to cities in the 19th cen­tu­ry and where by 2030 more than 90% will be city dwellers, has sud­den­ly redis­cov­ered the val­ue of recon­nect­ing to the nat­ur­al world.

The final book I’ve reviewed is Peter Bowler’s A His­to­ry of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to Isaac Asi­mov. This was a fas­ci­nat­ing book for me to read, because it remind­ed me of the research I did while writ­ing Dooms­day Men. In par­tic­u­lar the fic­tion of HG Wells. The his­to­ri­an of sci­ence Peter Bowler describes Wells as a “prophet of progress” and argues that the voic­es of such tech­no­log­i­cal opti­mists have been obscured in sur­veys of the way the future was depict­ed in writ­ing dur­ing the first two-thirds of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. He accus­es fic­tion writ­ers of spread­ing an atmos­phere “of per­ma­nent doom and gloom” while pop­u­lar sci­ence writ­ing was “full of expec­ta­tions of future ben­e­fits”.

Instead of explor­ing the “night­mare sto­ries set in a dehu­man­ized world” of Hux­ley, Yevge­ny Zamy­atin and oth­ers, Bowler con­cen­trates on the work of what he terms the “enthu­si­asts”, writ­ers of pop­u­lar sci­ence from J. B. S. Hal­dane, J. D. Bernal and A. M. Low to Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asi­mov, who were typ­i­cal­ly opti­mistic about a future improved by the dis­cov­er­ies of sci­ence.

It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing study and well worth read­ing, although I felt in the end that he risked over-sim­pli­fy­ing what is at heart a com­plex and sub­tle sto­ry of the inter­ac­tion of sci­ence, soci­ety and cul­ture. My review appears in the 13 April issue of the TLS and is sad­ly not free to view, although if you have a sub­scrip­tion it’s online here.

If I find a free moment I may post it on my web­site…

We’ve just returned from a few days stay­ing in Lis­bon — a beau­ti­ful hilly city of cob­bled streets, tiled hous­es and deli­cious food. You can see some of my impres­sions of the city on Flickr.

Before I left, I read Elisabeth’s Lists: A Fam­i­ly Sto­ry, by Lulah Ellen­der, a haunt­ing­ly beau­ti­ful med­i­ta­tion on life and death, span­ning three gen­er­a­tions of a fam­i­ly. The nar­ra­tive is anchored in a book of lists kept by the author’s grand­moth­er. The lists range from inven­to­ries of house­hold linen and a “reg­is­ter” of eggs laid by her chick­ens dur­ing the war, to what to serve at a cock­tail par­ty for eighty peo­ple. Accord­ing to Ellen­der, “Elisabeth’s lists are her fil­ing sys­tem for her trou­bles and her joys, tri­umphs and bore­dom”.

Ellen­der also explores how we use lists to bring order to the world: “these cat­a­logues hold our chaos”. As his mar­riage crum­bled, Ein­stein hand­ed his wife an impos­si­ble list of Con­di­tions for Mar­riage. Before he mar­ried, Dar­win wrote down the pros and cons of mar­riage, even­tu­al­ly decid­ing a wife would be “bet­ter than a dog any­how”.

My review of Ellen­der’s book is pub­lished in Sat­ur­day’s Guardian.

I’ve been read­ing for­mer phi­los­o­phy lec­tur­er Michel Eltchaninoff’s study of the ideas of Marine Le Pen. One for­mer senior fig­ure in the Front Nation­al tells him: “Marine Le Pen doesn’t have any ideas. She only acts through instinct, because her brain is like a reptile’s. what ideas? What con­cepts? She’s an echo cham­ber, that’s all!”

But his fas­ci­nat­ing ide­o­log­i­cal detec­tive work shows how her think­ing is deeply embed­ded in the tra­di­tion of French far-right thought: “Le Pen moves behind a mask and she is very good at the game.”

Read my review at the Guardian.