Book Review

As a break from the Advent list, I thought I would share with you a couple of books recently read and which I recommend.

In an earlier Advent list I included Clement Attlee as one of my spiritual (that may not be the best word - do I mean intellectual?) influencers. Citizen Clem is a well-constructed biography of this great man, written with zest by John Bew. Bew I must add is an academic based at God's own King's College London. Any minor eminence by association will be exploited by the shameless Overgraduate.

Very different in timbre is Christopher Buckley's No Way to Treat a First Lady. This rabelaisian tale of unscrupulous American politicians and pond scum lawyers had me smiling and reading avidly. It was written a decade and a half ago but it chimes pleasingly with the present rotten state of America. You have to laugh because the only alternative is to cry. Enjoy in particular the machinations of Boyce 'Shameless' Baylor, 'the man who broke $1000 an hour, the sound barrier of legal billing.' There is a part of even the crustiest workaday lawyer that wants to be like Baylor.