The list reflects my interest in history and my own recollections of the days before the current era of mass tourism and online globalisation. I confess to a feeling of painful nostalgia for a time when we all had a very different worldview, and these books are all of that period. They feature temporal grief for an age that has passed. They are all highly readable books by writers at the top of their game.
Fireweed is the sort of novel I want to read myself. My role models are Nevil Shute, Winston Graham, Sebastian Faulks, and William Boyd. Their books carry a strong storyline, realistic characters, and sometimes Shakespearean references interwoven with romance and humour. I had always been intrigued by the bombed cities of Germany in the aftermath of war and chose them as the setting for a romance between a British officer and a German aristocratic girl who has been forced into prostitution.
My historical research also led me to the mystery of Hitler’s tormented childhood and his extraordinary relationship with Unity Mitford, culminating in her pregnancy. The resulting novel explores the themes of love, sex, justice, and guilt in the wake of war.
The best novel ever about WWI. I was there with them in the trenches and finally understood how the generals came to have the mentality that allowed the slaughter to continue.
Forester is a superb writer and grossly underrated. He is a model for any aspiring writer. I must have read it four times at least, and each time found some new aspect to enjoy.
The book John Kelly reads every time he gets a promotion to remind him of 'the perils of hubris, the pitfalls of patriotism and duty unaccompanied by critical thinking'
The most vivid, moving - and devastating - word-portrait of a World War One British commander ever written, here re-introduced by Max Hastings.
C.S. Forester's 1936 masterpiece follows Lt General Herbert Curzon, who fumbled a fortuitous early step on the path to glory in the Boer War. 1914 finds him an honourable, decent, brave and wholly unimaginative colonel. Survival through the early slaughters in which so many fellow-officers perished then brings…
Bombed day and night for thirty days, the city became the epicentre of a firestorm. Nonfiction about the bombing of Hamburg, told from both points of view, it reads like the best fiction and never just as dull history.
This book made me aware of the terrible destruction the Allies wrought on nearly every city and town in Germany, though at great cost also to the courageous airmen who wreaked the havoc. Full of facts and strong writing, it was the inspiration for my writing.
In the summer of 1943, British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg that was unlike anything the world had ever seen. For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map. The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month and were visible for 200 miles.
The people of Hamburg had no time to understand what had hit them. As they emerged from their ruined cellars and air raid shelters, they were confronted with a unique vision of…
Every young man’s dream of living on a Greek island in the 60s before the tourist invasion ruined the idyll forever.
The antiquity, the sun, the resin-flavoured wine, the turquoise sea, and the sweetness of the islanders’ welcome is the background to a tale of mystery and magic, sexual promise and deadly intrigue.
This book changed my life. I went to the islands as soon as I could after reading The Magus, and sixty years later wish myself still there.
The Magus is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching assignment on a remote Greek island. There his friendship with a local millionaire evolves into a deadly game, one in which reality and fantasy are deliberately manipulated, and Nicholas must fight for his sanity and his very survival.
A world that has gone forever, portrayed by one of our finest novelists.
Nostalgic bliss in the Oxford of the 1930s, with its dreaming spires and punts down the Isis in the sunshine. The scene shifts to the aristocratic world of the eponymous stately home in its heyday before the war and in the very different conditions of wartime. It was hard for me not to feel pangs of sadness at not being part of this world – I failed the entrance exam to Oxford in 1960.
A masterclass in how to create characters and settings.
It is WW2 and Captain Charles Ryder reflects on his time at Oxford during the twenties and a world now changed. As a lonely student Charles was captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte and invited to spend time at the Flyte's family home - the magnificent Brideshead. Here Charles becomes infatuated by its eccentric, aristocratic inhabitants, and in particular with Julia, Sebastian's startling and remote sister. But as his own spiritual and social distance becomes marked, Charles discovers a crueller world, where duty and desire, faith and happiness can only ever conflict.
This real-life detective story intrigued and perplexed me in equal measure and still does every time I read it.
Was Richard III really the evil monster of Shakespeare’s play who killed the little Princes in the tower or the monarch who, in the three short years of his reign, introduced the bail system, attacked corruption, and set up hospitals?
This clever novel, featuring Tey’s detective hero investigating Richard’s history and character, led me to investigate another mystery, that of the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
_________________________ Josephine Tey's classic novel about Richard III, the hunchback king whose skeleton was famously discovered in a council car park, investigates his role in the death of his nephews, the princes in the Tower, and his own death at the Battle of Bosworth.
Richard III reigned for only two years, and for centuries he was villified as the hunch-backed wicked uncle, murderer of the princes in the Tower. Josephine Tey's novel The Daughter of Time is an investigation into the real facts behind the last Plantagenet king's reign, and an attempt to right what many believe to be the…
I grew up in Green Bay and my dad was the official scorer for the Packers, so I was immersed in pro football history even as a child. During my careers as a newspaper feature writer and editor and as an advertising copywriter, I also became a sports historian. My magnum opus was “The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History,” 650,000 words. But my favorite by far is my biography of Johnny Blood. I was 12 or 13 when I decided I wanted to write it, 33 when I began working on it, 38 when I finished it, and 78 when it was finally published.
From Kirkus Reviews: "This debut short-story collection paints the wistful life of a newspaper journalist as seen through his sexual and romantic encounters...
Throughout, Hickok writes in an assured style, pulling readers along. The narrow sexual focus results in a distorted picture, yet other aspects of Art's life emerge at the edges—his intelligence, his career as a journalist, and even the sincerity with which he gives in to his male urges and construes sex as love...
Subdued yet alluring; a pensive reflection on the male psyche."
Love, Sex, and Other Calamities: 15 Stories and a Poem by Ralph Hickok
A man arrives in a new city, hoping to start a new life, but he’s still haunted by memories of past loves… A 12-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl have a brief romantic encounter when their families are vacationing in neighboring lakeside cottages… Two teenagers enjoy sexual experimentation when she babysits for her little brother while her parents are out drinking… A high school boy has a crush on an older woman who identifies with Molly Bloom… A college freshman falls in love with a high school freshman and is amazed at the depths of her passion… A guy wins…
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