How to Live with a Neurotic Dog – Stephen Baker

How to Live with a Neurotic Dog is to dog ownership manuals what Sellars and Yeatman’s 1066 and All That is to history books. Stephen Baker’s approach is very simple.   He takes the basic format of your standard dog-training manual and proceeds – with a completely straight face – to subvert it irredeemably by [...]

Read Full Post »

The Red Album of Asbury Park by Alex Austin

Review by Jay Benedict. Regular Vulpes guest Jay Benedict joins us again with another highly individual review – this time of a novel which isn’t exactly an everyday story of country folk … —o— The first thing you should know about Asbury Park is that it’s a city in Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States [...]

Read Full Post »

Pitmen Painters. The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver

I saw the play, loved the paintings and bought the book, and I was very glad that I did all three. I found much to enjoy in the play, was bowled over by the paintings, and am very grateful to the book for giving me a much more rounded view of the Pitmen Painters, what [...]

Read Full Post »

Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman

In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. You spend two months driving the street in front of your house, seven months having sex. You sleep for thirty years without opening your eyes. For [...]

Read Full Post »

Old friends: Re-reading Isaac Deutscher’s Stalin

Part of the Writing Stalin sub-series Some critics have remarked on my “cool and impersonal” approach to Stalin. Yet the work on this book was to me a deeply personal experience, the occasion for much silent heart-searching and for a critical review of my own political record. I had belonged to those whom Stalin had [...]

Read Full Post »

Speaking For Myself by Cherie Blair

The first time I recall seeing Cherie Blair was when she was a guest on Jay Leno’s talk show last winter. She was intelligent, funny and self-depreciating. When I saw her autobiography on the library shelf recently, I was pleased to have the chance to learn more about her. Of course, I was familiar with [...]

Read Full Post »

Coming up on Vulpes Libris…

I have the power!  Oh… I can’t help myself! When I volunteered to do the coming up post I promised to be good… but it is so tempting to be a megalomaniac and just squat here… looking mighty!  Hmm… umm… now I am kind of stuck.  I have the power but I’m not quite sure [...]

Read Full Post »

Extreme Kissing by Luisa Plaja

I have to own up before I begin… I had already read Extreme Kissing before it became a book.  In fact, I am beyond thrilled to be mentioned on the inside.  My main involvement however was to say things like “fabulous”, “this bit is brilliant” and “I am soooo loving it”, but if that merits [...]

Read Full Post »

Gut him in the friendly in a fortnight

Bill Doonan from Cavan was a radio operator in the Irish Army who found the Emergency a bit dull so he deserted and joined the British one. One Sunday afternoon in 1943, during a lull in hostilities in Southern Italy, he disappeared. He was eventually found up a tree with his radio, having managed to [...]

Read Full Post »

Queen of the Wits: a life of Laetitia Pilkington, by Norma Clarke.

This review is a personal reaction by a non-historian – I find the 18th century a foreign country; even though I have done some literary and historical research into the early part of the century, I find the contrasts quite bewildering. The men (mostly) that I’ve studied are progressive, philanthropic, compassionate, intellectually curious, pious, impious, [...]

Read Full Post »