"Leonardo and the Last Supper" by Ross King

Ostensibly a history of a painting, this book has so much more. We learn about the wars between the Italian city states of the renaissance as the French armies sweep south (successful because warfare in mediaeval Italy was an almost bloodless affair of mercenary posturing) through Florence to take Naples, only to be defeated by Syphilis. We learn of the hothead preacher Savanorola and his cataclysmic regime in Florence. We learn of the Dominicans and the Franciscans and of Pope Alexander Borgia and his warlord son Cesare.

Most of all, of course, we learn about Leonardo. He was an illegitimate left-hander, probably gay, who was so enthusiastic about everything that he was almost constitutionally unable to actually finish anything. However, he had such enormous talent that his patrons continued to patronise him and the few artworks he actually produced were revolutionary in their impact upon art (even if, with the Last Supper, his experimental techniques meant that it deteriorated within a few years of its unveiling). And we learn about his models, including his apprentice whom he nicknamed 'devil' for his thieving and bad behaviour but whom he tolerated till his death, probably because he had a crush on him. We learn about his belief that you can tell a story from hand gestures and how he collected those gestures from watching people having arguments and how he used them in the painting. We learn about the techniques of fresco and the new use of oils that Leonardo pioneered. We learn how he composed the painting, about the religious ideas that went into it. We investigate the iconography of fruit.

By the way we watch the iciest of cold water being cascaded upon the Da Vinci code. Sophie sees the figure on Jesus' right is a woman and believes it to be Mary Magdalene rather than St John. "Leonardo was skilled at painting the difference between the sexes" states the DVC. In fact, as King shows, Leonardo rejoices in androgynous figures including another St John who is a dead ringer for the St John in the Last Supper. Both may be women, or both may have used the devilish apprentice; Leonardo seems to have liked effeminate looking young men.

This is a brilliant, fantastic and absorbing study in which the painting of a single work of art is used to enlighten a whole historical period. Wonderful. May 2014; 275 pages

Also read these reviewed books by Ross King:

• Brunelleschi's Dome about the building of the dome over the Duomo in Florence, but also lots about renaissance Florence
• The Judgement of Paris: as the Second Empire dies Impressionism is born: Meissonier, Manet, Monet and the rest; Napoleon III, the Franco-Prussian war, the Paris Commune and much much more!

This is one of a selection of books I am reading to help me understand more about art. Others reviewed on this blog include:

• Seven Days in the Art World by Julia Thornton: a look at the institutions of the art world such as an auction, a fair, a magazine and the Biennale.
• Think Like an Artist by Will Gompertz which includes such insights as 'artists think big picture and fine detail' and 'artists steal'
• Ways of seeing by John Berger which is particularly good at sexism in art
• How art made the world by Nigel Spivey  which proposes that art has changed the way we think and altered our civilisations
• The Story of Art by E F Gombrich, a fascinating historical tour through art

"Fire over England" by A E W Mason

I read this when I was a boy and it is a boy's own yarn of derring do in Elizabethan England. It was first published in 1936 by the author best known for The Four Feathers.

Robin Aubrey, English through and through and a schoolboy at Eton, is recruited by Sir Francis Walsingham to travel to Spain as a spy to find information about the imminent Armada. Privately, he wishes to find his father who was tortured by the Inquisition and may or may not be dead. But in this world of cross and double cross, Catholics in England are stalking Robin as he goes about his espionage. His enemies include a rival for the hand of his beloved Cynthia and his old Eton tutor, nicknamed Mr Ferret and a stage villain who makes Uriah Heep look subtle.

A brilliant adventure story, carefully plotted, with some well-drawn characters and breathlessly written. Should be reprinted please.

May 2014; 316 pages

"What money can't buy" by Michael J. Sandel

In recent years Economics has begun to rebrand itself as the science of human behaviour (for example in Superfreakonomics or Nudge. It believes it is possible to assign a monetary value to many human transactions. It sees the marketplace as the most efficient mechanism for adding value to human exchanges. Sandel believes that over these years we have moved from having a market economy to being a market society; a society in which more and more things are monetised.

He makes a compelling case. In Israel there was a daycare centre where the teachers became annoyed at the parents who came late to pick up their children. So they decided to fine the annoying parents. The number of late pickups increased as parents saw the fine as a fee they could pay for the centre keeping the kids for longer. They no longer worried about wasting the teachers' time. Sandel argues that this shows how assigning a price to something crowds out morality.

He also considers Christmas. Economists hate gifts. If I spend money buying you something you hate then I have wasted my money. It would be better if I just gave you the money I have spent (or even gave you less). So gifts 'destroy value' in economic terms. Nevertheless, Sandel argues that giving gifts is somehow better than giving money.

It is a very compelling argument. He looks at the things money should and should not be allowed to buy. Most people would argue that you should not be allowed to buy a favourable verdict in a trial or votes in an election. But faster treatment in hospitals is probably OK. We routinely bet on our own deaths when we take out life insurance but in the US many companies take out life insurance on their employees even without the knowledge of the employees. Is that right? What about people who buy up the life insurance policies of people with terminal illnesses, thereby providing the dying people with cash in their last few months whilst at the same time making a great profit (if they die earlier than expected)> Where is the morality in that?

This is a wonderful book full of insights and arguments into some very tricky ethical issues.

May 2014; 203 pages

"Agent 6" by Tom Rob Smith

This is the third book of a trilogy featuring Moscow detective and secret agent Leo Demidov; the other books are Child 44 and The Secret Speech.

Agent 6 is split into two halves. The first half, set in 1965, recounts a diplomatic school trip from Moscow to the UN which results in political intrigue, assassination and murder. The second half takes place during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1980 and the rise of the Mujahadeen. The two halves scarcely talk to one another.

The author writes in small bites, carefully entitled with the place and date, for example 'Soviet-Finnish border, Soviet checkpoint, 760 kilometres NW of Moscow, 240 km NE of Helsinki, New Year's Day 1973'. Some of these sections last only two or three pages. This gives the book a breathless feel which might be mistaken for excitement. It also makes the story rather disjointed. It is, I suppose, a very filmic technique. Each mini story is like an individual frame; together they make the film. But I found it flickered.

A lot of the characters do things and/ or suffer things that are evil and wicked and there is a certain amount of moral perspective offered but a lot of this seems to be told to us rather than the reader being shown the moral vacuums by the actions and dialogues of the characters. The overall feeling is that the plot is in charge of the characters and they are puppets reading their lines, unable to stray from the script.

I think that the author believes that he has given each character a back story and therefore clothed them in reality. The FBI Agent, Jim Yates, has an invalid wife. But somehow that detail doesn't animate Jim. He still does what the plot needs him to whether he would or not. It is as if the author had a box of spare clothes and he fished in the box and randomly picked something to dress his character in. But the character doesn't know what he is wearing.

It was hard work to finish the book and in the en I wondered why I had bothered.

May 2014; 543 pages

"A Higher Authority" by Barrie Hyde

An anonymous MI5 operative is recruited by 'The Organisation'. After three months at a Kenyan training camp his first mission is as an accounts clerk in Slough working for the UK end of an Italian Marble company.

I very much enjoyed the first part of the book in which the author takes time to build up a picture of the Organisation and its operatives. The hero, who changes identity almost as often as he changes his clothes, is an immediate hit in the Slough Office owing to his success at chasing up bad debts. His life is humdrum, travelling 'cattle class' (from this and a number of other snipes we learn that the author clearly does not enjoy air travel) to meet his girlfriend abroad, being courted by the Jamaican in the flat upstairs, meeting yet another lady in a Slough McDonalds. This mixture of spy with mundane is a hallmark of a number of the very best thrillers: it particularly reminded me of Goldfinger in which Oddjob drives a Ford Popular around Kent at speeds sometimes approaching twenty miles per hour.

Suddenly, things change. Suspected as a snoop, our hero is captured as he spies on the lorries unloading marble; his pretext of collecting more paper for the photocopier is not accepted and he is knocked unconscious to wake in the back of a lorry. Fortunately he can activate the tracking device on his watch (memo to self: if ever I have to kidnap a suspected spy I will strip them naked before tying them up in the back of the lorry). The excitement starts with torture and shootings.

Suddenly, the so far rather ordinary hero was able to cope with watching friends die. Suddenly the rookie operative became one of the brains who led the mission. Suddenly a criminal organisation which had been ludicrously easy to penetrate became just as easy to shut down.

I missed any sense of moral darkness. The hero's girlfriend questions whether the mission is worth the body-count at several points but this is never properly explored. The hero himself bounces back from tragedy in the same way as he recovers from being attacked: he has a bit of a headache but nothing a good night's sleep, a shower and a hearty breakfast won't cure.

You do wonder, and it would be fascinating to read a sequel in which this was explored, whether this emotion-less, identity-less, hero working for a never-named Organisation in a moral vacuum is actually a bit of a psychopath.

The plot is classic thriller and well constructed (although I began to get a little lost as the cast list started mushrooming). It contains the mandatory twist right at the end.

It certainly kept me turning the pages and I read it in just a few hours. May 2014; 216 pages

"Nelson" by Carola Oman

This is a traditional biography written in 1947 and marred by the unconscious racism of the time. This aside it is a well written narrative which never stops to interrogate its sources and provides a comprehensive account of the life of its hero. It is clear that to this author he is a hero. She is as discreet as possible about Nelson's jettisoning of a wife in favour of the wife of an older man with whom he lived in a menage a trois. She is clearly annoyed that Nelson was never promoted beyond Vice-Admiral of the White.

I realised two things when reading the book. The first was that most of Nelson's life was very boring. He wasn't at sea that much. He spent long periods when he was at sea cruising without seeing any enemy ships. During his long chase after Villeneuve shortly before Trafalgar h never saw French ships and England was saved by an indecisive action with another Captain (who was subsequently court-martialled). Many of the times that Nelson did see action were disasters or, at best, honourable draws. His reputation rests on three battles: the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar. Three days in his life. Each battle was a matter of getting up close to the enemy and then fighting as hard as he could. The getting up close was brave and twice involved going through shallows in which he might have run aground, and was tactically clever (going shore side of the Nile ships and using two lines of attack at Trafalgar) but one cannot avoid thinking that Nelson was really rather lucky.

A lot of lives seem to boil down to one or two magic moments.

Well written but rather long-winded. May 2014; 574 pages

"The Cuckoo's Calling" by Robert Galbraith

I really liked it.

This is detective fiction, pure and simple. A private eye with a complicated background and a dysfunctional private life, not to mention a seedy office and a mountain of debts, is given a last chance in a case that involves a dead super-model, a drugged-up musician, a gangsta rapper, a camp fashion designer and London's high social life. He also has a temporary secretary who proves a more able assistant than could be expected. They trawl through the evidence and all the clues are laid out but you don't know who the murderer is until the final chapter. Classic stuff and very well done.

Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for J. K. Rowling who, as everybody knows, wrote the Harry Potter books and the Casual Vacancy. For what it's worth, I think this is her best book yet and a very good book indeed.

Far better than the run of the mill whodunnits. It kept me reading voraciously until the final page.

The second book in the series, The Silkworm, is even better
The third book, Career of Evil, takes a turn into the territory of very dark, very visceral psychological thrillers

May 2014; 449 pages

"Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott

Sub-titled 'Some instructions on writing and life', this book offers perceptive and delightful insights into the world of the writer. Write for the sake of writing, she urges. Don't write to be published. Publication won't change your life: you'll still be as screwed-up after being published as you were before. Write because it is the best possible way of creating art out of an exploration of what it means to be human. Therefore it is hard. Therefore you will have to expose your worst side to the world. And therefore it is rewarding.

That sounds a bit intense.The book is really funny. She sees the humanity within the experiences she describes and so she is like a wonderful stand-up comic doing observational comedy. She describes how she took her three year old son to see a dead baby and how he gave the baby a ball, in case they play catch on the other side, and a small toy time-travel car for reasons she doesn't understand. She writes about a day out at the Special Olympics. There is warmth and laughter and humanity and, yes, sometimes, a little tragedy.

Did I learn how to write? I learnt to enjoy the writing process and not obsess about where the written product is going to end up. I learnt to focus on tiny bits and get them right rather than trying to do too much. I learnt to work every day and to use all the material I possibly can. I learnt that I am not good enough yet, and that I may never be good enough, but if I work hard and steadily and try to write the truth every day that I will one day be better. And that should be good enough for anyone.

A brilliant, wonderful and enjoyable book. April 2014; 237 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The life and strange surprising adventures of Daniel Defoe" by Richard West

The man born Daniel Foe was an extraordinary man who lived in extraordinary times. Born in the year of the Restoration of Charles II, he lived through the Plague and Fire of London, the Glorious Revolution, the Union with Scotland, the first Jacobite risings, and the South Sea Bubble. He was a rebel, fighting with the Duke of Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor, a hosier, a maker of bricks and pantiles, a bankrupt, a pilloried pamphleteer, a prisoner, a journalist, a secret agent and finally a writer responsible for Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, and  A Journal of the Plague Year as well as many other titles. With such a cv he is an obvious subject for biography.

Richard West faces some difficulties. Defoe loved to mix fact and fiction and his own accounts of his own life are inconsistent, contradictory and partial. There is no record of his birth. So West has relied a great deal on Defoe's own writings, whilst warning us about them. This means extensive quotes. West also quotes from historians about the period but concentrates almost exclusively on Macauley and Trevelyan. There is a feeling that West has done insufficient independent research and has relied too heavily on a limited number of sources.

But the book rattles on until the middle when the journalist becomes the author. You might think that this is where the story would become compelling. For 236 pages, Defoe has led an exciting life but now he is going to become the author of the famous books. Suddenly, West goes weird. Robinson Crusoe is described, with two other books, in twenty pages. Twenty three pages are devoted to A Journal of the Plague Year with two other works of historical fiction. Moll Flanders and Roxana merit twenty five pages. Then 84(!) pages are given to his three volume travelogue, A Tour of the Whole Island of Great Britain. This one work is thus given more space than all his fiction put together!

Moreover, West attempts little in the way of literary criticism. Most of the descriptions of the books are taken up with an exhaustive summary of their plots. I would have been far more interested to know how Defoe came by the ideas for these books, what they shed upon his life (West does note the repeated obsession with money that was a probable legacy of Defoe's bankruptcy), how they were received by his contemporaries (both Crusoe and Flanders were best-sellers), and how they influenced future writers. But West only mentions in passing the fact the Moll Flanders was published the year before The Beggar's Opera was first performed and he is virtually silent on the presumable obsession with crime that Georgian society must have had at the time. As for the 84 pages on the Tour, most of this is devoted to discussing each place Defoe went to (or claims he went to).

In short, I felt the first half of the book was a triumph but I was extremely disappointed in the second half.

April 2014; 408 pages

In A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, Diana and Michael Preston make the point that Robinson Crusoe was in poart based on the best-selling travel books of William Dampier who was on the expedition that marooned Alexander Selkirk, the model for Crusoe, and on the expedition that rescued him!

"Restoration" by Rose Tremain

I read the sequel, Merivel, to this book first.

Robert Merivel is an orphaned medical student who successfully treats an ill spaniel belonging to Charles II; this leads to his preferment at court and eventually to his being installed as the master of a Norfolk country estate as the nominal but cuckolded husband of Charles' latest mistress. But he falls in love with the woman and incurs the king's wrath.

The story rambles from Fenland madhouse to Cheapside lodgings. There seems no coherence or purpose to the tale. As with the sequel, it is a picaresque. It works because it explores the character of a remarkable man, a frail mortal who can laugh at himself, an Everyman in whose flaws and sufferings we can recognise ourselves.

This book was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1989.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Rose Tremain novels:

• Sadler's Birthday (1976)
• Letter to Sister Benedicta (1978)
• The Cupboard (1981)
• Journey to the Volcano (1985)
• The Swimming Pool Season (1985)
• Restoration (1989)
• 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year
• Shortlisted for the 1989 Booker Prize
• Sacred Country (1992)
• Winner of the 1992 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
• Winner of the 1994 Prix Femina Etranger
• The Way I Found Her (1997)
• Music and Silence (1999)
• Winner of the 1999 Whitbread Award
• The Colour (2003)
• The Road Home (2008)
• Trespass (2010)
• Merivel: A Man of His Time (2012)
• Shortlisted for the 2012 Wellcome Book Prize
• Shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott prize
• The Gustav Sonata (2016)
• Winner of the 2016 National Jewish Book Award
• Shortlisted for the 2016 Costa Book Awards
• Longlisted for the 2017 Baileys Women’s Prize for fiction
• Winner of the 2017 Ribalow Prize
• Islands of Mercy (2020)
• Lily: A Tale of Revenge (2021)
• Absolutely & Forever (2023)
• Shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize

"The Watchers" by Stephen Alford

This is a history of the Elizabethan espionage services. Because Elizabeth I continued her father's breakaway from Roman Catholicism and because she never had a clearly nominated successor there were many attempts to replace her by assassination, coup or invasion. The pope called for her replacement, branding her a heretic and a bastard with no legitimate right to the throne and therefore exonerating in advance any Catholic who might kill her. Mary Queen of Scots, who was for 29 years the next in line for the English throne and who was a member of the ultra-RC Guise family, was the focus for a number of attempts to replace Elizabeth, even when a deposed Queen under quite strict house arrest in England. Philip II of Spain, once King of England as the husband of Elizabeth's elder sister Mary, always threatened even though it was not until 1588 that he managed to launch the Great Armada invasion attempt (and there was a second Armada in 1596 which was wrecked by a storm off Finisterre before the English discovered it was on its way). And there were a number of assassination attempts (though some might have been more due to the zeal of rival intelligence services to discover plots than actual attempts). So there was a need for England to have people involved in what we know call espionage but they then called spiery.

First Sir Francis Walsingham ran a very successful intelligence service which, amongst other things, 'discovered' (or maybe manufactured or provoked) evidence for the Babington Plot in which Mary Queen of Scots appeared to assent to a plot to kill Elizabeth. After his Walsingham's death in 1590 the Earl of Essex and Sir Robert Cecil ran rival intelligence services (Cecil's prevailing and eventually, although this is after the book finishes, preventing the Gunpowder Plot).

This book chronicles the spies who worked for them, decoding ciphers, collecting information, penetrating conspiracies, acting as double agents and agents provacateur and disseminating disinformation. Some of these shadowy spies are working for ideals, others for money, others because they are fascinated by aspects of a life where one is never whom one seems to be. Many of them are turncoats and one often wonders how any spymaster could be certain that his men would not turn their coats a second time.

Alford's book has moments of extraordinary interest, especially when he describes the spies in the shadows. Concentrating on the characters as he tends to does mean that sometimes the narrative is not chronological and it is sometimes a little confusing when he repeatedly returns to an event to describe it again from a different point of view. Furthermore, not all of the spies are as interesting as their colleagues and there are moments when the story drags. I also would have liked more details about the spycraft; it would have been fun to have learned more about the ciphers used (Simon Singh's The Code Book has a fascinating chapter on the Babington code cipher which shows how a technical discussion of code-breaking can be very readable).

Overall, however, Alford's book keeps the interest going and throws light on what must be one of the murkiest areas of history. April 2014; 325 pages

"Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe

A best-seller in 1722 by the man who had also written Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders is a sort of Rake's progress about a lady who descends (quite slowly) into iniquity. Born in Newgate and raised first by gypsies (a common theme in 18th Century fiction and a strange paranoia of the times) and then by the parish, the lady who later becomes known as Moll Flanders (although she makes it clear that this is a pseudonym, the trade name she used when she later became a famous thief) dreams of becoming a gentlewoman. As a companion to the daughters of a family she is first seduced by the elder son and then marries the younger. Following his death she marries a spendthrift linen-draper; when he runs off she marries (bigamously, though this doesn't seem to be important) a man who takes her to Virginia where she discovers that he is her brother And this is important; she is horrified by incest); she then oscillates for a while between widowhood, being a mistress and marrying again. As in Jane Austen, the purpose of marriage is to improve one's fortune and therefore much effort is made to conceal her relative poverty: finally everything goes wrong when both herself and her new husband discover that they have both tricked one another into marrying for money and they are virtually destitute. However, Moll never really sees the need to work for her living, so poverty is a relative matter, and she never worries too much about supporting her children, most of whom she discards with little care. Finally, staring poverty in the face, she resorts to theft and begins a long and successful career as pickpocket, shoplifter and opportunistic sneak thief.

This is a fascinating insight into the morals and morality of early eighteenth century London. Without an effective police force, criminals could only really be caught 'in the act' by a hue and cry and then turned over to the authorities. One notorious criminal .mastermind', Jonathan Wild, ran a criminal gang and acted as crime boss, fence, 'recoverer' of stolen property for reward, and thief-taker. Moll's exploits, written when Jonathan Wild was at his height, seem based on the story of one of his female associates. He became iconic as a base for literary stories including 'The life of Jonathan Wild' by Henry Fielding and 'The Beggar's Opera' by John Gay (first performed in 1728).

Although there are some rather slow passages where Moll painstakingly analyses the moral dilemmas facing her (albeit from a very materialistic moral viewpoint), there is a lot of action. Little of it would seriously shock the modern reader: Moll is never a whore in the modern sense of the word although she often refers to herself as this because she has sex with men whilst she is unmarried, or married to someone else, or married illegally (eg incestuously). Her thieving is essentially opportunistic (it reminded me very much of 'Harry the Valet', the jewel thief). What seems appalling to her are abortion (which she goes to some lengths not to commit) and incest (which she commits accidentally).

Seen from a modern perspective, Moll is a deeply flawed woman. She casts her children away, marriage is a financial transaction, she has no compunction about her victims (a fact she admits herself) and even after her repentance in the face of death and redemption she is still more than happy to build the foundations of her new life as a businesswoman on the ill-gotten gains she has amassed from her life of crime.

I enjoyed Moll Flanders. Although there were moments when I struggled, there were also moments when the narrative had me hooked. Nowadays its principal delight is probably as a social commentary of the criminal underworld of London in the early 1700s but it is still well worth reading as a story.

April 2014; 317 pages

I have just finished reading a biography of Daniel Defoe. He was an extraordinarily interesting man who lived from the Restoration of Charles II, through the Glorious Revolution, till the Jacobite Rebellions of the early Georges.

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God

"The Late Scholar" by Jill Paton Walsh

This is another Lord Peter Wimsey novel by Jill Paton Walsh based on the characters created by Dorothy L Sayers and continuing the story from Walsh's The Attenbury Emeralds.

With affection and gusto, Paton Walsh returns Wimsey back to an Oxford College where, as visitor, he has to adjudicate in a fellows' dispute as to whether they should sell and mediaeval manuscript to purchase some farmland which they might then develop for much money. Although I enjoyed dipping myself back into some much-loved characters I was again disappointed by the plot. One by one the dons are being bumped off and the methods used seem to correspond to the previous cases investigated by Lord Peter (and written up as fiction by his wife, Harriet Vane). For this reason, this novel should come with a huge spoiler alert (although it might be argued that no-one would read these books if they hadn't already exhausted the authentic Peter Wimsey corpus). Such clues as there are seem transparent: one of the dons has being sneaking over to Cambridge to buy detective fiction and, yes, it is the one I thought it would be and, yes, he is the villain even though he has next to o motive apart from insanity. Improbably, among these few fellows there is another murderer as well! He also has little in the way of credible motive.

So as a whodunnit it fails but as fan-fiction it gives you that cosy sense of having been amongst old friends. Paton Walsh drops real people into the text: Wimsey's brother-in-law Charles Parker asks to drink in the pub where he can see C.S.Lewis (whose theological works he admires) and Tolkien gets a mention.

A fun read but not a great whodunnit. April 2014; 356 pages