Writers Read

The urge to read has remained with me as we go deeper into the coronavirus lockdown. In the last week I went straight from Simon Raven's Friends in Low Places to its successor in the Alms for Oblivion sequence, The Sabre Squadron. To my mind this is the best of the ten novels. It can profitably be read without reference to the other books, but once you have read it I suspect you will want to search out the remainder.

After the scabrous Raven, a change of tack altogether. I fancied a chunk of comfort reading so it was back to a childhood favourite author, Arthur Ransome. I lazily thought I had read all the Swallows and Amazons tracts but I had overlooked Missee Lee. A book which would today have child protectors rushing to condemn it and which might very well also be deemed racist, it rockets along at breakneck pace and is a plain and simple delight.

Politics still intrudes. In America the Democrats have at least stopped fighting each other and will hopefully direct all their energy to defeating the narcissistic sociopath that is Donal Trump. Mind you whether the selection of someone as obviously second-rate as Joe Biden to lead the fight is a good one must be very open to question. Good luck to them in any event. In 1980s America I met Republicans who were very thoroughly decent people but one has to say that the amoral manner in which today's GOP has fallen in behind Trump should leave members thoroughly ashamed.

At home I'm afraid I have to say that I have always found something vaguely unpleasant in the phenomenon of Keir Starmer. Yet another bloody lawyer, he was a good enough prosecutor to attract a knighthood under a Tory regime. Despite his carefully cultivated appearance of moderation he had no problem falling in behind the laughable policies of Corbyn. He started his leadership of the Labour Party by disavowing factional opposition for the sake of opposition and the very next day published a mealy-mouthed attack on the conduct of the coronavirus crisis. When Boris Johnson fell seriously ill Starmer blathered self-serving bollocks about constitutional procedures. Sanctimonious prig.

But hey ho, the sun is shining, the Pig ran five miles this morning and there is one glass of Chateauneuf-du-Pape left from last night's bottle (it was a bank holiday so therefore does not count as a weekday) - the recliner in the garden is calling and the Pig is going to read another chapter of John Wilders' The Lost Garden, a consideration of Shakespeare's history plays (including those of Rome) in a lapsarian context. You must be so jealous.