In the second of today's reviews, Elberry shares his thoughts on this uncompleted 'third book' from Fermor's famous european journey. There were an archbishop and several bishops and archimandrites besides the abbot and his retinue. They officiated in copes as stiff and brilliant as beetles' wings, and the higher clergy, coiffed with ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Elberry
'We seem to have lost any sense of what it is to be human'...Elberry reviews Lebanese intellectual Amin Maalouf's exploration of the post-9/11 world... In general, I try to avoid knowing anything about politics, foreign affairs, or the world; that way, I can’t have opinions and so avoid strife. I am ... Read More...
Elberry enjoys a new addition to the pantheon of great surrealists... In an age of drably realistic novels about middle class London fools and their tedious midlife crises, it's refreshing to read a book narrated by the Principal Composer to the Imperial Court of Greater Fallowfields. Alas for Greater Fallowfields, the Emperor ... Read More...
Elberry reviews Howard Jacobson's collection of essays. WARNING: Below the fold the language is very strong and unasterisked. But also very funny. What a f***er, I thought. What a grotesque, big-nosed, loud, clownish, apple polishing literary f***er. It was 2003 and I was looking at Howard Jacobson. He was sitting at a ... Read More...
Elberry reviews a new spy thriller... Judging from British charity shops, SAS memoirs are being continuously bought, possibly read, and then discarded. They are popular but not, it seems, held on to for re-reading. Since the 1980 Princes Gate siege, the SAS have become a part of urban mythology, as supermen ... Read More...
Fed up with the post-Olympics feelgood factor? Sense of national pride making you gag? Good news, here's why we're all going to hell in a handcart... Perhaps to be born English was to have won first prize in the lottery of life, in the 19th Century. In the 21st, it's more like one ... Read More...
The conservationist ideology is full of contradictions, according to a new book. Elberry, who anyway would be "happier in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, daubing himself with blue woad and hunting his enemies with a stone club", reviews it... I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It ... Read More...
For the first time in history, more than half the population - 3.3 billion people - is now living in cities. Elberry reviews 'the ultimate guidebook to our urban centres'... From the sky, England still looks green. On the ground, it's another story, all cancerous conurbations and serial ghettos. Most people ... Read More...
London foodie journalist goes native in Italian village? Elberry finds his expectations exceeded by Tracey Lawson's account of the exceptionally healthy lifestyle of the people of Campodimele... I feared this might be an "I adore peasant food!"-style book by a London fool with a Tuscan villa. Certainly, the signs were not ... Read More...
A major new academic work on Wittgenstein reveals the human face of a brilliant but difficult man, finds Elberry... In an age of meretricious academic nonsense, Wittgenstein in Cambridge is a professional, scholarly work. Professor McGuinness has collected and edited nearly 500 pages of letters between the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and ... Read More...
