Books of the Week: March

This month, well, you know the score.

So our books of the month are slightly different, as I found myself towards end of month picking up items which reflected in a way our current situation.

All four I believe are classics, worthy of reading time and again.

The Kid Stay in the Picture – Robert Evans.

Evans, legendary producer, playboy and well a whole host of other things. 

If you’ve ever visited the gent’s loo at Chiltern Firehouse, you’ve probably heard the audio book played in background. 

A fairly frank – perhaps too frank and who knows how truthful – look at the golden era of Hollywood, when men were men with the shirt collars to prove it. 

If nothing else, Robert Evans knew how to tell a tale, with wit, verve and the odd name dropped in. 

The Hunters – James Salter.

Talking of Robert Evans, as new head of Paramount Pictures he was behind the Robert Redford vehicle Downhill Racer with script by James Salter.

Salter, is the prototypical American male author. Well, American male of a certain type and experience. His books with their clipped but deep prose, show a world filled with tension, sexual, financial, chemical or animal.

If you want to learn to write, read Salter, then understand you’ll never match it.

This, his debut, is a work of fiction, albeit one written from experience. Salter was a Korean War fighter pilot, resigning from USAF post publication.

Whilst a book about the ecstasy and pain of flight and combat flying, it’s also a book about waiting, the gnawing waiting for something you don’t know when, something with an outcome you know not what. 

GBH  - Ted Lewis.

If Salter is the American master, for British crime, there is Ted Lewis, whose GBH has recently been re-released. 

Lewis, the author of Get Carter is the father of British noir, his work understood and laid bare a certain type of intrinsically British criminal enterprise.

His best work – as well as his last – is GBH, a tale split between city and sea. Of George Fowler a Soho crime lord watching his world collapse, paranoia increasing with each jump between location. 

Amongst the violence, both latent and overt, a view of a Britain told through pubs, arcades, clubs and roads. A time capsule of the past presented in a way as fresh as when first published.

A Time to Keep Silence – Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Patrick Leigh Fermor like Edmund St Aubyn - is one of those British writers, who is good to turn to during a crisis. Regardless of material there is comfort to be found between verses. A Time to Keep Silence is a trip and exploration round European religious institutions.

Now, before you walk away, like GBH it’s a glimpse at a world long gone, told with PLF’s calm wonder at life, each page washing over the reader. Ideal isolation reading really.