Ian Thomson has contributed reviews and articles to the Spectator since 1987. Here is a selection of recent contributions:
Reviews
Wave goodbye to the weight-gaining, drunk-driving Inspector Wallander
Ian Thomson 11 October 2014
An Event in Autumn Henning Mankell
Harvill Secker, pp.176, £9.99, ISBN: 9781846558078
Some years ago I met the Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he was staying. A waitress came up to our table. ‘I think,… Read more
The real Dad’s Army was no joke
Ian Thomson 30 August 2014
Operation Sealion Leo McKinstry
John Murray, pp.486, £25, ISBN: 9781848546981
Dad’s Army, the sitcom to end all sitcoms, portrayed the Home Guard as often doddery veterans. In one episode, Private Godfrey’s genteel sisters are seen to prepare their Regency cottage… Read more
Only tourists think of the Caribbean as a ‘paradise’
Ian Thomson 28 June 2014
Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day Carrie Gibson
Macmillan, pp.447, £25, ISBN: 9780230766174
A couple of years ago in Jamaica, I met Errol Flynn’s former wife, the screen actress Patrice Wymore. Reportedly a difficult and withdrawn woman, her life in the Caribbean (apart… Read more
The punk who inspired a generation of British woman to pick up a guitar
Ian Thomson 21 June 2014
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes, Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys Viv Albertine
Faber, pp.421, £14.99, ISBN: 9780571297757
Viv Albertine is deservedly famous as the guitarist of the tumultuous, all-female English punk band The Slits. Their debut album, Cut, released in 1979, combined jangly Captain Beefheart-style guitarwork with… Read more
Narcotically-induced mischief in an urban wasteland
Ian Thomson 7 June 2014
Music Night at the Apollo: A Memoir of Drifting Lilian Pizzichini
Bloomsbury, pp.214, £16.99, ISBN: 9781408815991
Fifteen minutes by rail from Paddington, Southall is a ‘Little India’ in the borough of Ealing. An ornate Hindu temple there, the Shree Ram, is set back from the beep… Read more
Exclamation marks, no; aertex shirts, yes!
Ian Thomson 10 May 2014
A Curious Career Lynn Barber
Bloomsbury, pp.211, £16.99, ISBN: 9781408837191
An Encyclopaedia of Myself Jonathan Meades
Fourth Estate, pp.341, £18.99, ISBN: 9781857028492
Jonathan Meades, the architectural, food and cultural commentator, appears on television in a pair of retro shades and a trademark Blues Brother suit. He looks like a poseur, and indeed… Read more
Jorge Luis Borges and his ‘bitch’
Ian Thomson 3 May 2014
Georgie & Elsa: Jorge Luis Borges and his Wife: The Untold Story Norman Thomas di Giovanni
The Friday Project, pp.259, £16.99, ISBN: 9780007524389
When Jorge Luis Borges died in 1986, at the age of 87, he left behind 100-odd slender fictions and as many poems, but no novels. Compared with the blockbusting authors… Read more
Gay Paree: food, feuds and phalluses – I mean, fallacies
Ian Thomson 15 March 2014
Inside a Pearl Edmund White
Bloomsbury, pp.261, £18.99, ISBN: 9781408820452
In his preface to The Joy of Gay Sex (revised and expanded third edition), Edmund White praises the ‘kinkier’ aspects of homo-erotic life. Practical advice is given on frottage, spanking,… Read more
Ian Thomson 1 February 2014
The Short Fiction of Flann O’Brien Neil Murphy and Keith Hopper (eds)
Dalkey Archive, pp.435, £9.50, ISBN: 9781564788894
On his deathbed in Dublin in the spring of 1966, Flann O’Brien must have been squiffy from tots of Paddy. A bottle of the amber distillate was smuggled in to…Read more
‘She’s the most important Jewish writer since Kafka!’
Ian Thomson 11 January 2014
Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector Benjamin Moser
Penguin Books, pp.479, £12.99, ISBN: 9781846147814
The Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector was a riddlesome and strange personality. Strikingly beautiful, with catlike green eyes, she died in Rio de Janeiro in 1977 at the age of only… Read more
The many attempts to assassinate Trotsky
Ian Thomson 4 January 2014
The Man Who Loved Dogs Leonardo Padura, translated by Anna Kushner
Bitter Lemon Press, pp.576, £20, ISBN: 9781908524102
Leon Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, is a retired chemist in his early eighties. I met him not long ago in the house in Mexico City where his grandfather was murdered… Read more