The latest in a sequence of lists of recently-read books, listed in reverse chronological order.
- Linda McDougall [2023]: Marcia Williams: The Life and Times of Baroness Falkender. Biteback Publishing. This is a book about a fascinating topic, spoilt and undermined by the very poor quality of the writing. The book is very repetitive, with each chapter containing a synopsis of the argument of the entire book, and, for many chapters, more than one synopsis.
The book has so much to offer, particularly as the author knew Lady Falkender and many of the other people involved, and she brings to bear insights lacking in previous writing about the good Lady F: the author is female, a former TV journalist, and the wife of a Labour MP. But the book rambles, and repeats itself, and does so repeatedly. Moreover, instead of summarizing or paraphrasing others, entire paragraphs by other people about Lady F are just inserted into the text. This is not how well-written books are written. Perhaps the author, an elderly lady now herself, dictated the book and nobody, certainly not the author or any editor, read and edited the transcripts.
The author provides no evidence for her belief that Harold Wilson and Marcia Williams had had a sexual relationship when they first met in the 1950s. Like most everyone who has commented on that friendship, the author has both too much imagination and too little: She is unable to imagine a very close friendship between two people without also imagining their relationship must be sexual. Only two people know what their relationship really comprised, and both of them are dead.
- Stephen Downes [2013]:A Lasting Record. HarperCollins. An account of the life of American concert pianist, William Kapell, who sadly died in a plane crash at San Francisco airport after a concert tour of Australia, 70 years ago last month, and the amateur recording artist, Roy Preston, who had made home recordings of the ABC Radio broadcasts of some of Kapell’s Australian concerts.
- Susan Gibbs [2011]: Call Of The Litany Bird: Surviving The Zimbabwe Bush War. Loose Chippings. A well-written account of farming in Matabeleland during the Second Chimurenga and the first few years after Independence in Zimbabwe, by the daughter-in-law of Sir Humphrey Gibbs, the last Governor of Southern Rhodesia.
- Anatole Leikin [2016]: The Mystery of Chopin’s Préludes. Routledge.
- James Penberthy [2019]: Music and Memories. Tablo. An autobiographical memoir by Australian composer James Penberthy (1917-1999), compiled by his son, David Reid, from Penberthy’s writings and oral interviews he gave. The book is perhaps not all that Penberthy would have published, nor would he have included all the contents here. There is some repetition, maybe due to the collated nature of the book.
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