Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm Gladwell, Eleanor Catton and many more recommend the books that impressed them this year
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.
William Boyd
By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.
William Boyd
By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...
- 11/23/2013
- by Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Tom Stoppard, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, William Boyd, Bill Bryson, Shami Chakrabarti, Sarah Churchwell, Antonia Fraser, Mark Haddon, Robert Harris, Max Hastings, Philip Hensher, Simon Hoggart, AM Homes, John Lanchester, Mark Lawson, Robert Macfarlane, Andrew Motion, Ian Rankin, Lionel Shriver, Helen Simpson, Colm Tóibín, Richard Ford, John Gray, David Kynaston, Penelope Lively, Pankaj Mishra, Blake Morrison, Susie Orbach
- The Guardian - Film News
Local councils are cowed by cuts and the opposition too cautious: only bold action can salvage investment for growth
Councils have been remarkably silent about the savagery of the cuts they have sustained. At last, the supine Sir Merrick Cockell, Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, is speaking out as a Guardian survey reveals the extent of the damage inflicted. Councils are losing one-third of their funding and, he says, so far this is only "the calm before the storm" – a storm sweeping away more Tory councils each May.
Visiting several Labour city council leaders, I found them politically conflicted: should they blast the government or boast of how well they are managing in hard times? This is odd, as the government rains down the heaviest cuts on the poorest (Labour) areas: Liverpool is the worst affected while Oliver Letwin's Dorset is the least. I was surprised by...
Councils have been remarkably silent about the savagery of the cuts they have sustained. At last, the supine Sir Merrick Cockell, Conservative leader of the Local Government Association, is speaking out as a Guardian survey reveals the extent of the damage inflicted. Councils are losing one-third of their funding and, he says, so far this is only "the calm before the storm" – a storm sweeping away more Tory councils each May.
Visiting several Labour city council leaders, I found them politically conflicted: should they blast the government or boast of how well they are managing in hard times? This is odd, as the government rains down the heaviest cuts on the poorest (Labour) areas: Liverpool is the worst affected while Oliver Letwin's Dorset is the least. I was surprised by...
- 3/26/2013
- by Polly Toynbee
- The Guardian - Film News
Director Ken Loach's new film revisits the year that Britons turned to socialism – and ushered in the NHS, public ownership and the concept of public (not private) good. We trace the spirit of '45 and speak to some who remember the dawn of a new life
Ray Davies, robust, articulate and dignified, aged 83, veteran campaigner, a Labour councillor in Caerphilly for 50 years, sits in a Spanish civil war beret and recalls the time, in 1945, when he was 15 and had already worked two years underground in Welsh mines.
"In those days, it wasn't safety that came first, it was coal," he says. "We were in the pit and the message came down – 'Labour's won by a landslide!' Tough, hard miners had tears streaking down their faces, black with dust. They said, 'Ray, this is what we've dreamed about all our lives. Public control of the railways and mines and banks,...
Ray Davies, robust, articulate and dignified, aged 83, veteran campaigner, a Labour councillor in Caerphilly for 50 years, sits in a Spanish civil war beret and recalls the time, in 1945, when he was 15 and had already worked two years underground in Welsh mines.
"In those days, it wasn't safety that came first, it was coal," he says. "We were in the pit and the message came down – 'Labour's won by a landslide!' Tough, hard miners had tears streaking down their faces, black with dust. They said, 'Ray, this is what we've dreamed about all our lives. Public control of the railways and mines and banks,...
- 3/2/2013
- by Yvonne Roberts
- The Guardian - Film News
From a full programme of film and stage adaptations to a new James Bond novel, unpublished works by Rs Thomas and Wg Sebald and a new prize for women writers, 2013 is set to be a real page-turner
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
January
10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.
18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.
24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.
- 1/5/2013
- The Guardian - Film News
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