What to read: Tariq Ali’s takedown of the former British PM and Serend!pity’s stories of culinary success lead our wrap of new book reviews. | By Lucy Sussex and Steven Carroll
Book critics Lucy Sussex and Steven Carroll cast their eyes over recent fiction and non-fiction titles. Here are their reviews.It might be said of Churchill that he only ever got one thing right, but it was a big one thing – to fight on in 1940 and reject any idea of a negotiated peace with Nazi Germany. Nonetheless, as Tariq Ali documents in this forensic dismantling of the Churchill myth, even at the height of the Blitz a Gallup poll showed that Churchill was not popular.
It’s emblematic of the woman that emerges from this entertaining combination of diary and memoir, from 2016 to 2021. But it’s not simply taken up with memories of acting over the years. There’s Brexit, railings against Trump and Boris, the politics of owning a house in France and more. In this collection of writers on writing, that view is debunked by the testimony of, say, Fiona Kelly McGregor, who documents all the jobs she’s done and does, from reviews to sex work, to bring in money. Another writer works in a call centre. Vanessa Berry, in a superb piece of writing, pays homage to the role of clutter in the writing process: written scraps that join other scraps and may create a whole.
The unlikely, such as peasants, through hard work and ability, become great warriors. Chen here strips away the supernature, with no religious overtones. Her Joan is naturally strong, and a scrapper. If her ability to learn medieval warfare seems uncanny, then it is made perfectly credible.
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