Nicholson Books

Gray is a difficult colour to master. It is enigmatic, aloof. It can be warm, with tints of peach and pink, or cold, with tints of sapphire and indigo. But no one could ever doubt that American artist Romaine Brooks was a master of gray. From her mysterious, icy portraits of members of the belle époque and the jazz age, to her preference for colorless fashions and décor, to the melancholy of her own day to day existence, Brooks was almost the personification of the colour gray itself. It would take great skill to write a biography of such a woman. Therefore I was ecstatic to discover that Diana Souhami had taken on the task of writing a book on the entwined lives of Romaine Brooks and her long-time companion, Paris saloneuse Natalie Clifford Barney. Both American, both wealthy, both artistic, Barney and Brooks still made an odd pair. Barney was the ever-social butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, beautiful and flamboyant. Brooks was her exact opposite, a withdrawn, flighty creature from a background of insanity, who preferred to live in the shadows, alone. This sounds like perfect material for the talents of Souhami, who has already tackled the lives of such challenging individuals as Radclyffe Hall, Gertrude Stein and Greta Garbo. Souhami also wrote the award-winning "Selkirk's Island", untangling the threads of the life of Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Defoe's classic, "Robinson Crusoe". Yes, Brooks and Barney seemed in good hands.
I cannot express, then, the disappointment that this anticipated book brought. Distressingly short not only for a biography of two distinct souls, but also an examination of the times in which they lived, the book is riddled with factual errors and blunders. Souhami begins her race by stumbling. In her Foreword she states plainly, one would say almost flippantly, of her use of the Internet as a main source of research-and it shows. The author appears to think that everything you find on the Web is factual, not realizing that the information to be found there is only as accurate as the knowledge of those posting it. This is a fatal error. Souhami seems almost dismissive of her own research, telling us about how much she enjoyed reading the pop-up advertisements she encountered while on the Net for such things as sexy chat, and even giving us a footnote detailing a pill that can help men lengthen the size of their endowment. Souhami further mars the book with the constant insertion of bits and pieces of her own past that, although well written, are disturbingly incongruous and intrusive and give the impression that she would much rather be talking about herself.
Next, Souhami falters in her facts, tripping too many times to enumerate, but here are a few major potholes: Lady Mary "Minnie" Anglesey is said on page 40 to be "about to divorce her transvestite husband." Souhami then footnotes that Mary was married to Henry Cyril Paget, the 4th Marquess of Anglesey. This is a gross mistake. Mary Anglesey was indeed married to the 4th Marquess of Anglesey, but she was married to Henry Paget, not Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, who was not only infamous for his flashy dressing-up and obsession for jewelry, but was also Mary's own son (and, for the record, Henry Cyril Paget's wife's name was Lilian). Next we are told that the Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio's nickname for Brooks was "Cinerana". This is incorrect; his nickname for her was "Cinerina", meaning, "little gray one". Also, the Baroness Madeleine Deslandes was known as "Elsie", not "Ilsie". On page 141 we are told that Brooks described in a letter the "house" on Capri of the eccentric Marchesa Casati as "simply beautiful", but the author fails to point out that Casati's "house" was, in fact, the famous Villa San Michele, rented from Dr. Axel Munthe.
Beguiling anecdotes also slip through the fingers of an author so proud of her diligent international research. No mention is made of the mystery revolving around Brooks' painting "The White Bird" and how some historians believe it is a portrait of Barney's lover, the renowned grand horizontal, Liane de Pougy. Nor are we told that the face of the cat in Brooks' portrait of Baroness Catherine D'Erlanger was deliberately painted to resemble that of her husband's. Nor do we hear of the intriguing story that, after becoming a virtual hermit in Nice, living in a room devoid of everything but a bed and table, and having given away all of her paintings, drawings and writings, beneath Romaine Brooks' death bed was found the only canvas she kept, her portrait of Luisa Casati. Also, there is no mention of the small book, written by Elizabeth de Gramont, another of Barney's paramours, on Brooks' work that was published in 1952. Nor that the normally pathologically reclusive Brooks granted a long interview with French writer Michel Desbrueres that appeared in the Parisian periodical "Bizarre" in 1968, just two years before her death. Souhami also claims that Brooks painted a portrait of artist Elizabeth Eyre de Lanux, but, oddly, there is no reference to this painting in any prior biography of Brooks or in any catalogue of her oeuvre. Has Souhami discovered a hitherto unknown painting? We are given no clue. Perhaps another fifteen minutes of research on the Internet would have cleared up all of this-or better yet some good old-fashioned investigatory legwork and elbow grease that Souhami's research sorely lacks.
Next is the matter of Souhami's innumerable and annoying footnotes. She footnotes everyone and sundry with what she must have felt were charming and witty caricatures-Noel Coward is summed up as being "friendly with the lesbian haut monde", composer Prince Edmond de Polignac's only reference says "he died after eight years of marriage" and Luisa Casati is dubbed "the patron saint of exhibitionists". Such sketches are neither charming nor witty, and consistently get in the way of reading the text. As a reader, I also do not need to know such minutiae as how many seats there are in the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, that Gluck's "Orfeo ed Euridice" was first performed in 1762, or the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne". It is most interesting to note that even though the author strives to introduce us to every person in the book that some celebrated individuals such as Madame Eugenia Errazuris, a bright grand dame of the beau monde, are left floundering and unannotated, while poet Anna de Noailles, writer Paul Morand, and interior designer, Elsie de Wolfe, each a distinguished sitter for Brooks, are not mentioned at all (nor is the fact that Brooks' portrait of de Wolfe was often sarcastically called "The White Goat", because of the small ceramic goat that sits beside the designer and mimics her simpering expression perfectly). And worst of all, these intrusive footnotes shine a glaring light on the fact that Souhami never footnotes any of her relevant and/or fascinating facts. How do we know that Liane de Pougy's asparagus soup congealed and her risotto went cold while she, at lunch, waited for writer Max Jacob to arrive, or that after being pelted by preserved cherries by boys at the Long Beach Hotel in New York, a young Natalie Barney ran into the arms of Oscar Wilde for comfort. Where does this information come from? Such charming tidbits require references for future researchers.
And here is where Souhami's book fails the most-as a research tool and reference book for the future. Subsequent authors and students cannot use a book rife with easily correctable errors without perpetuating those same mistakes ad infinitum. As a highly respected writer, shame on you, Ms. Souhami. You should have known better.

A fascinating story of two extraordinary lives soaked in the demi-monde at the fin-de-siecle with the world of the rich and artistic as its background. Unfortunately, this telling comes with some irritating costs. The book is studded with bizarrely extraneous footnotes: does any reader of this story really need to be told who Dante, Proust, Cocteau, Sappho, Gertrude Stein, Sarah Bernhardt (among many others) were? Also, the author interpolates little autobiographical asides that have nothing to do with the dual biography at hand and merely comes across as an egotistical affectation.

When Souhami actually gets to the story at hand (which in fairness is most of the time), historical errors aside, she tells a wonderful tale of the sapphic world in turn-of-the-century Europe.

Very well written when not marred by the author's idiosyncrasies.

I thought that this book really kept you on the edge of your chair. I hate books that are predictable. This book was not predictable at all. In fact, it really was hard to put down until the end because you never knew what would happen next. Thumbs up to this one... Richard in Henderson, NC

I laugh at how the author signs herself off as the "ex-wife of Andy McNab". When I bought Andy's books, I didn't look at them as being written by the ex-husband of whoever.

If her books are good and have merit, they should sell without having to cash in on Andy McNab's name.

How dare such a woman try to make a cheap buck out of a true British hero. This lady has used Andy's credit to try and gain for herself. She isn't even his wife any more. I wish i had never bought the book, she degrades the whole british army and alspecially special forces. As a member of 8 commando brigade i am disgusted to have ready this cheap excuse to try and make money off of someone elses heroism.

"However, if you are a Flynn completist, and you happen to stumble upon a used copy for no more than 50 cents, you might go ahead and add it to your collection - if only to keep it out of the hands of someone else.. Or it might make a useful thing to start the logs burning in your fireplace on a cold winter night. Or still again, it might be worth keeping in one of your drawers for its limited curiosity value, as yet one more piece of garbage about Errol Flynn that has no redeeming value, and is about as bad a book as it could possibly be." Lincoln Hurst

It appears that there is a love/hate relationship with this novel. And it looks as if hate is on the fast-track. Not for me, I found it a bizarre fascinating read. Geoff Nicholson is known as a farcical writer, and I can see some of that exhibited in this novel, but it needs more. This was no laugh out loud novel, sort of a hehehe under your breath. Some of the story is so far fetched that I can envision a movie screen with the characters looking at each other in confusion.

Jake is a down at the heels wanna-be actor, working in a photo shop when one day a former classmate, Sacha, appears, and within a day Jake has been hired to appear in a film about Errol Flynn. Dan Ryan, the director starts sending reams of paper, books about Flynn, music and what not. Jake has difficulty keeping up with all of the info flying at his feet. And then he realizes that he wants to play Errol Flynn. This seems to have been the plan all along and off he goes to make a movie. Nothing is ever as it seems we are told, and that is true here. The film is strange, Errol Flynn is shown as the sexually explicit man he was, warts and all are fully filmed. Dan Ryan, the director becomes more unhinged and the dark side of movie making is exposed. Dan Ryan's, wife Tina, seems to be made of sterner stuff but is that really true? The novel moves from London to Hollywood to Las Vegas and the desert in-between. The charcters are more outlandish and overdone as the story moves on, but that is when the fun really begins. The novel bogs down at times, but at the same time I needed to know the ending of this strangely elusive novel. The sex talk is explicit, but there is nothing here that has not been said time and time again.

This is a novel of obsession, the dark side of Hollywood with a twist. Not enough of a twist to keep Errol Flynn intact, but this was entertaining in a bizarre sort of way. Would Errol Flynn approve? No idea, but why should we care?

Recommended. prisrob 01-01-08

Looker

Sex Collectors: The Secret World of Consumers, Connoisseurs, Curators, Creators, Dealers, Bibliographers, and Accumulators of "Erotica"

Bedlam Burning

This is not a book about Flynn - but a sleazy novel using Flynn's name-not for flynn fans

I agree with the other reviewer, this book has concentrated on the areas exactly as he stated, however I still think this is a very nice book, and the pictures / places in it are very good. Spain is a beautiful place and this book is a bit one-sided, although to be honest I didn't even notice that until I read the other review.

If you are interested in the things it does concentrate on, it is a very nice book. If you are looking for the things it has stayed away from, or you are looking for an overview of Spain, well it might not be the book you are looking for.

Please note I have travelled all over Spain.

I have found this book of very little help for those who want to get an idea of how Spain looks like. It seems it was written in the 19th century instead of in the 21st. The authors present (represent) Spain the same way it was pictured in many European and North American books of the 1800's and early 1900's: focusing mostly in the moorish buildings (which are not the majority in Spain)and the drafty rural houses. It seems that mostly shows, except for some pictures of Galicia, the misleading stereotype of Spain as a land of matadors, flamenco and moorish influence.
I can't believe there aren't any pictures of Madrid, the capital of the country and with an enormous cultural heritage, Salamanca, with one of the oldest Universities in Europe, all the incredible cathedrals in Castile, the Renaissance buildings in Andalusia, the Cathedral of Santiago the Compostela and the Pilgrim's Path in Northern Spain (with a tremendous importance in Europe's Middle Age cristianity).
The book omits the legacy of the Roman Empire, the palaces built during the Habsbourgs and the Bourbons, resulting in a very partial way to show the reader a general idea of Spain. It also surprises me that, in a book titled "Spain: Architecture,Interiors, Landscape, Gardens" there are the authors' political references to Spanish history, like when they say "...the infame Pizarro", refering to the conqueror of Peru, Francisco Pizarro.
The conclusion is that most Spaniards will be offended reading this book, the foreign readers that have already visited Spain will think they visited a different country and, if they haven't been here yet, when they first visit, they will most likely have the feeling they arrived to a very different place .
I planned this book to be a present for my girlfriend's family in the US, but I decided to return it because it would have not met my expectations: to show them an objective perspective of Spain's Architecture, Interiors, Landscape and Gardens.

"By contrast, England is part of the G-7, one of the richest countries in the world, and, still, needed all the help it could get from the United States in 1982 to defeat a third world country such as Argentina, in a fourth-class war against a fifth-class army."

The USA took a neutral position during the British, Argentinian conflict over the Falkland Islands. The reviewer below is incorrect when he states Great Britain (not just England) recieved help from the USA during this war.

It goes to show, maybe that he should read more of the "boring" factual books that adorn his bookshelf rather than the glossy mags with pictures he might otherwise enjoy.

Keith Kyle, the author of this long book (656 pages, index included), manages to turn an interesting topic into a boring review of details within details that, ultimately, tells us he has done his homework searching for the last document in the darkest corner of some British archive, but has failed at keeping the reader's inrterest or his objectivity as a writer intact. The Arab-Israeli conflict is one where objectivity is wished for, although never attained. Kyle pretends to attempt objectivity and then slides into partisanship without even noticing or, at least, not wanting the reader to notice. His stance is very much against the joint Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956, and he can't be faulted for that. A colossal blunder on the part of two former important powers, it served Israel in its limited security concerns and, ironically, it also helped the Egyptians and Colonel Nasser. That strange war humiliated the British and caused the downfall of the English Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. However, Kyle strays from here on, and provides the reader with hundreds of pages of obscure documents and his own "insight" and opinions, which can be summarized thus: Israel, dominated by Zionists (this is supposed to be an insult) suckered the British Empire and the French Republic into a fight where they could not be winners, only to help its ailing economy and tell Nasser, in the starkest terms, that war with the Jewish State was extremely serious. Kyle wants me, and the rest of the reading public, to be as outraged as he is about this, and I can't help but smile. Whether Israel suckered the two Europeans, or whether it got on the bandwagon when the decision to wallop Egypt had been taken in London and Paris, the English and French got what they deserved. Most of Kyle's acid comments are directed toward the British government and a good portion of that country's press. However, there is a badly supressed anti-Israel feeling throughout the book, which is not surprising, given the author's connection with "The Economist," one of the most respected magazines in the world, one that can truly be called "international" due to the coverage the entire planet receives in its pages, but one that has a documented history of antagonism towards Israel and some other countries (most of Latin America, Turkey, South Korea, for example), while tending to see with very benevolent eyes the doings of other countries, like Ireland. By antagonism I refer to the insistence, article after article, in portraying only the bad, rarely the good, and when the good is discussed, it is peppered with enough negatives as to render the praise, faint as it was, null. Both the magazine and the writer suffer from a very British maladie: incredulity at how low England has fallen in the world rank. Kyle sees the Suez affair as the proverbial last push that sent the United Kingdom tumbling down the steps, and showed it as militarily incapable of credible dissuasion outside the British Isles. Britain was eventually told by Eisenhower to cease and desist in Suez and the British complied with their patron's wishes. There is the parallel that Kyle seems to hate the most: Israel also does -mostly- what the US says. But Israel appears to be quite comfortable with this situation and is, after all, a country that only 20 years ago became developed ("The Economist" doesn't recognize this and still lists Israel as a "developing" nation). Israel has been able to take care of its wars quite capably. By contrast, England is part of the G-7, one of the richest countries in the world, and, still, needed all the help it could get from the United States in 1982 to defeat a third world country such as Argentina, in a fourth-class war against a fifth-class army. It could have gone alone against Egypt in 1956, but it needed a ready excuse -separating the fighting sides, Egypt and Israel- and a willing partner in the deed, and that was France. Perhaps given what Jewish terrorists did to British soldiers -and sometimes civilians, as in the bombing of the King David Hotel- in the last years of the Palestinian Mandate, right before the Israeli War of Independence and the foundation of the State of Israel, it is understandable that the author has very cold feelings toward Israelis, especially the Israeli military, so efficient, so ruthless, so identified with the Israeli people. But he pretends to be objective. That is just not true. As I said, nobody is really objective in this particular conflict. I am biased toward Israel. Kyle's pretension of objectivity and the minutiae of documentation that nothing adds to the overall picture, although it does inflate his book, are the main reasons "Suez" gets, barely, one star with me. But, then again, I, at least, admit that I am biased.

This is a well-written tome. The style is witty, filled with quips and non-vampire-like skewerings. It is a light, quick read covering Le Fanu to The Exorcist and a few oddballs in between.

Only problem is that the author has nothing to say. In fact, the reader is left wondering why on earth he wrote the book in the first place. He is almost completely negative in his assessment of the occult writers he has set himself to review (with the possible exception of Haggard). Bad writing, superficial plots, thin characterizations, silly philosophies, obscure metaphors, the list of criticisms goes on.

Other than Bram Stoker, I am not familiar with the writers that St John Barclay reviews. Nevertheless, it is passing strange that he would wish to write a book about a subject that he detests concerning writers that he loathes.

Recommendation: Don't bother.

gordon coorigan often employs and offensive language and is often wrong. a book that should be forgotten.

Danger in High Places is set in 1993 and features Alix Nicholson, a freelance photographer who travels from Iowa to Washington, DC to snap photos of the AIDS quilt. As supporters for funding for AIDS research are reading the names of victims, a woman interrupts the reading to shout her opposition to AIDS funding when so many women were dying of various cancers for which there was little research funding. Alix is drawn to the woman and invites her to stay the night with her when it turns out that Sandra has no where to stay. Sandra is angry, mysterious, and piques Alix's interest and lust. During the next week, there is a murder, an arrest, and a confession. Alix is also drawn to a Congresswoman's aide and spends the night with her, too. While all this sounds interesting, even intriguing, the author was unable to make the reader care about any of the characters, from the murder victim to Alix. They are all cardboard characters and as the book progresses, the readers indifference grows. While I did finish reading the book, it was more because I wanted to know if the denouement was going to be as predictable as the characters were lackluster. It is to the author's credit that there was just enough of a twist at the end to be interesting although she pulled the murderer out of nowhere and didn't play fair with the reader by providing enough clues to even suspect the murderer. There are better written mysteries, there are better plotted mysteries, and there are more finely drawn characters in mysteries available. But if you're starved for a lesbian protagonist and a non-Naiad-formulaic read, this just might be your cup of tea.

I had to use this text for my class and was very disappointed. It suffers the same problems that many textbooks do--it is written less to the student than to those who already know the material. Thus despite the claim that the approach is less "theory" heavy, we are constantly bombarded with elaborate proofs, with little explanation of how one goes from one step of the proof to the other. Steps are frequently skipped, and this combined with some very small print, makes for a very unpleasant experience. The problems range from the simple to the extremely difficult and many of the computational problems are needlessly tedious. The pace of the book is fine, and they have a few topics in the appendices to help the students. Yet, the book's approach to vector space isn't really all that new, as the author implies, and an appendix on proofing would have been more to the point than either polynomials or induction. The author may be brilliant, and the book jacket is replete with kudos from his fellow professors, but for the novice linear algebra student, this is the type of book that can scare you away from math (and I love math).

I grew up reading Harold Evan's Sunday Times - in the late 1970s it provided a window on the world that few other papers could. I particularly remember comprehensive coverage of Egyptian President Sadats historic visit to Jerusalem; ongoing coverage of Soviet dissidents and a very welcome (I'm Irish) editorial urging Britain to consider withdrawal from Northern Ireland. However, from today's perspective, the paper's foreign coverage seemed to be written from a point of view which could be summarised as `what would the world do without Henry Kissinger?' [Indeed this has always seemed to be Mr. Kissinger's view also]; and that Soviet unreasonableness was a product of American hawkish unreasonableness and that balance, compromise and reasonableness were achievable with enough negotiation. My memory is of positive disdain for the emerging tax revolt in California and absolute dread at the more confrontational foreign policy approach being urged by followers of Governor Reagan. A major positive for me was the explanatory diagrams and the furtively taken photographs of Soviet missiles (SS-20s?) being deployed in Russian forests. I was reminded of these diagrams in 2002/3 when the modern Sunday Times gave excellent descriptions - supported by diagrams - of Saddam's mobile chemical/biological weapons labs - which turned out not to exist.
In saying all the above, I mean both to pay tribute to Harold Evans and to put in context the criticisms I have of this book - which contains descriptions of his triumphs as Sunday Times editor and his difficulties as Times Editor under Rupert Murdoch. The book has three sections - the first describes some of the episodes which made Evan's Sunday Times great - the investigative reports from the Insight team and others, of malicious cover-ups of poor quality in the pharmaceutical industry (Thalidomide) and the aircraft industry (McDonnell Douglas); the publication of the Crossman Diaries - laying bare the rivalries and mutual disdain of the members of the British Labour Cabinet. Having established his credentials as a `vertical' journalist - Evan's term, which he describes as `seeking to get to the bottom of things' - and lauding his proprietors, the Thomson's, for allowing him to do so, the second part of the book deals with the advent of Mr. Murdoch as owner. The machinations of Murdoch to gain control are fascinating, the Thomson's were drained both financially and personally by the losses induced by union activity, and they secretly dealt with Murdoch while other offers were being pursued by the editors. Murdoch eventually won ownership of both the Times and Sunday Times, having given guarantees of editorial freedom to a board of `national directors', guarantees, which if breached, were theoretically amenable to criminal legal sanction. As part of the change of ownership Evans was offered the editorship of the Times - one of the free worlds most revered titles. In his description of the paper, Evans reveals an almost po-faced reverence for the place of the Times as part of the British Establishment - he sees it as the paper of record, upholding fair, non-partisan and accurate journalism which British society has come to expect. One feature of this is his constant enumeration of people's educational background, almost every colleague is named and then his/her school and university are listed - for example Joe Smith, Winchester, Oxford, to establish both social class and academic (perhaps intellectual) credentials. He documents the `four pillars' of the Times as its reporting of Parliament, its legal coverage, its obituaries and its leader columns. Oh dear! Stolid stuff, from the fearless, vertical, investigative editor. Nonetheless this section contains fascinating accounts of Evan's new broom editorship coming to terms with the rather lazy attitude to scoops and freshness of news which, by implication, criticise his predecessor as editor (William Rees Mogg); and show that change was indeed necessary at the institution. Looming behind this story is Murdoch's general management style - haphazard interventions, secretive finances and lack of budgeting and planning. From the text it seems to me that Murdoch was overstretched with transatlantic acquisitions, rather than covertly scheming to undermine Evans.
The third section of the book reads a bit like Macbeth - Murdoch plots to renege on his guarantees and to impose his will on the editors. The text here is well paced and descriptive - the tension plays havoc with everyone, save perhaps Murdoch, Evan's second-in-command betrays him, various functionaries within the paper either resign or become lackeys, the `national directors' turn out to be paper tigers (this is too good a pun to delete), the Thatcher government sides with Murdoch and fails to taken any action as the guarantees are broken, piecemeal. The thrust of this section reveals Evans as tragic hero, valiantly striving to uphold freedom of speech against the devious, double-dealing Murdoch, whose lackeys live in fear of his disapproval. However, by the time I got to this section I had, sadly, lost a lot of respect for Evan's impartiality, his defence of press freedom seemed to me to cloak an innate inability to face change in the form of new commercial and political realities. This was reaffirmed in my mind when, on the day that Evan's agreed to reign, who should phone to commiserate but Henry Kissinger!
In the end I think the book is important in that it is illustrates that one important feature of change and leadership is that they are neither comfortable nor, initially at least, popular. Evans, though personally engaging - and I'm sure mercurial and demanding - came to represent a set of fading political beliefs. The change occurring at the times these events described were taking place saw the emergence of economic individualism unleashed by lowering taxation rates; the antipathy to organised labour and active military competition with the Soviet Union. The fading, indeed failing, Social Democratic consensus was overthrown by a more individualistic and competitive set of beliefs and the process was quite ugly, given the sincerely held beliefs on both sides. I believe Evans and Murdoch were representative shadows of this change. The rest of the story - Evans attractive forthrightness, Murdoch's furtive acquisitiveness - while the human interest focus of the story, are ultimately a side show.
This book is well told, highly dramatic and engaging, however seen at a remove of twenty five years it is a lament from someone who worked hard to become part of an establishment whose day was done.