As fine a written a short novella as you could wish to read. A kind of magical tale of an Auschwitz victim, prisoner, saved through his unlikely skill of being an expert violin maker. That odd conjunction of pure evil with the sublime. Just great.

This is a tale of the West Indies and how immense profits came into the hands of those entrepreneurs and slave owning families, when Sugar was the Oil of the 18th Century, the cause of wars and fortunes. I shall probably leave it here in France to return to another year. Actually I took it with me on my travels, but eventually abandoned it not because it wasn’t interesting, or because it was very heavy hauling it round the world, but because it wasn’t gripping. And it should be. Also there is a kind of general acceptance of slavery without the complete horror of the state and practise of this extraordinary evil. This may be too severe criticism of what is an interesting book, but I’m trying to explain why I suddenly lost interest. The tales of the islands – particularly the sides taken by Cavaliers and Roundheads during Cromwellian times - are funny. A continuation of a very British quarrel in the West Indies. The sheer death and destruction and plunder and greed and piracy (buccaneering!) is breath taking. The constant invasion of other islands. The bringing of hell to Paradise, the massacres of civilians, the death and destruction of huge invading forces, victims of disease and lack of water, planning and supply, all a far cry from the cricket playing Paradise of sandy beaches and sunsets…

The tragic, untold story of the Duchess of Windsor which seems neither tragic nor untold. Behind Closed Bores might be more accurate as he writes at enormous length and whenever possible about himself and his very minor role in the funeral of two Kings, Edward and George. I shall probably dip a bit again some other year in Provence as I never found anything very interesting and there must be something interesting in here. It seems pathetically royalist. Wallis Simpson: the less you know of her the more fascinating she is.

Which I find fascinating as he is writing about the perception of the Great War, in its poetry and novels and monuments, as much as his own fascination with the horror of trench warfare. I was drawn to it by having seen the magnificent production of Warhorse in London, which made me weep buckets. It’s a very fine book, and his observations are telling and interesting, particularly his theme of Remembrance and Remembering, and his description of the outpouring of public monument building in the twelve short years before the World was at it again.

A wonderful, tender, poetical book about literature and writing and being the son of a father who was a very special comic writer. His love and support for Kingsley and his tender recounting of his various times with him, including helping him die, is reflected in his own life, with various upheavals, and the sadness of leaving children behind in failed marriages, so that while he repeats some of the same patterns as his father, he never falls into the comic alcoholism of Kingsley. In fact we learn very little of his own wives and marriages – a deliberate choice, so that there is no bitterness in the book, only kindness and wisdom and regret. Even the Fourth Estate, who blast him for leaving his long time agent, and for having his appalling dental problems fixed in New York, only come in for a sad side swipe here and there, and he is remarkably gentle over his long-time pal Barnes dumping him, because he was married to Pat Kavanagh, the agent Amis let go. Actually he saves all his well-founded contempt of the fourth estate to an appendix and a blistering attack on Eric Jacobs, who was to have been KA’s literary biographer, but who noxiously and poisonously and typically could not resist writing cruel and untrue things in the Sunday Times about the funeral from which he himself was banned. The final theme of the book, the dreadful murder of his niece Lucy Partington, by the foul serial killer Frederick West, a recurring and dreadful theme, as she was missing for several years before the truth, and then mercifully not all of it, finally emerged, reaches its culmination in the permission of his Aunt to write about poor Lucy, only after she has seen his youngest daughter and seen her own daughter in her. The recurring healing power of children… (The cowardly brutal evil West commits suicide in Winson Green Prison, suicide being an occasional theme in this book, as also wickedness itself, which culminates in a visit to Auschwitz. ) This is a loving and remarkable book, from a brilliant man, and a loving father.

A very touching short story about the dying Duchess under the care/imprisonment of the appalling French lawyer Maître Blum. Her life and memory are both slipping away, and it is beautifully imagined and written, and far and away the most sympathetic she will ever appear in print.

A very light book to travel with. And autographed I see. It’s actually three short stories, the first one of which, about a skinny boy boxer, who builds and defends his reputation against The Goat, a thicker set boy, builds up to a classic fight, but it is about much more, growing up, maturing, becoming a man. I shall save the other two here in Provence.

Not over impressed by a book heavily recommended by Mr. B’s in Bath but I’ll leave it here in France and try again, and have a go at his first book:

Perhaps my favourite Mailer. He writes so marvellously. In many ways in this book he writes a little like Scott Fitzgerald. It concerns Hollywood, but viewed from the distance of Palm Springs, here called Desert D’Or, with wholly recognisable figures, such as Orson Welles and Marilyn Monroe with whom the ex-flyer hero has a huge affair. Largely about love and sex and the connection, if any, between them. Lots of other excellent characters: pimps, and queens and hangers on in the monstrous dictator world of the Studios, controlled by morally bankrupt heads and mediated by the Committee for Un American activities. This is a most honest book because he tackles and captures the conflicts and hesitations men feel about sex and physical love. The Deer Park is a pleasure ground of the sexually available (Is this Roman or French?) which here is used as a metaphor for Hollywood. Nothing is clear cut, nothing is self-evident, ambivalence is everywhere. It shows relationships working and not working at the same time. The completely contradictory feelings it is possible to experience about the loved one: lust, hatred, contempt, arousal and indifference. He is on to something new here I think, our ambivalence about ourselves and our desires. The novel is set amongst the corruption of the Studio World, the commercialisation of an apparent art form and the temptation to a young writer (obviously here Mailer writes of himself) to shag the beautiful and take the money. It explores hypocrisy, and how people become users of each other. All for HT, the exploitive Studio Head who is powerfully connected to the Subversive Committee and their goons. In the ambivalent figure of Welles, we see the self-loathing of the creative director at the mercy of commercial Hollywood, torn between his lust for the beautiful and his frustration with the stupid, while revealing his heartlessness, selfishness and snobbery: the ageing roué amongst a world of constantly available fresh meat. This is still true of contemporary Hollywood society and sadly hinders men committing to relationships there.

Stephen’s book is most interesting, about the discovery by the medieval book searcher Poggio di Baldisarri of an ancient copy of Lucretius Poem On The Nature of Things. Poggio’s happy discovery and his copying of this ancient text, saves the book from extinction and has profound effects on the world, including, he argues, starting the Reformation. He also suggests that this extraordinary poem is a classical statement of the real views of Epictetus, which profoundly influence modern science, and ultimately, through Thomas Jefferson, and the Pleasure Principle, to the concept of the Pursuit of Happiness, which sadly modern Yanks have replaced with the Pursuit of Money and Fame. I get to discuss this book with Stephen in October at Writers Block. I’m already worried what I might possibly add to the debate…

In Bath I picked up a lovely little Collectors Library edition and very much enjoyed it. It’s ages since I read this novel and I really loved it. She is so funny. Like Dickens she is very good at hypocrisy. Lack of self-knowledge is the key to her comedy; characters say one thing and act another, revealing their true selves, for instance the “poverty” of the half-brother who is persuaded by his wife to give Mrs Dashwood (the surviving wife) and her three daughters, absolutely nothing. This is more than irony this is savage irony (Swift – saevo indignation) which Dickens perfects. She has a clear eye to the folly and pretensions of society – living unhappily in Bath between 1801 and 1806, before she finally escaped to Clifton. Her first four novels were published anonymously. She does not do the Dickens thing of addressing the reader directly, where he involves himself in the suffering of society, there is no pulpit with Austen, but she is always there at your elbow, often with killer understatements. It is satire as much as irony, comedy with sentiment. The story revolves around the awakening of Sense in the giddy younger sister Marianne as opposed to Sensibility (Feelings, in the full sentimentality of the song.) The heroine Elinor sees all and suffers all in her sisters tragedy of unrequited love, but poor nflighty Marianne does not die of love. Almost. She goes through suffering to wisdom. Like all Jane Austen’s books it is about money, the lack of it, expectations of inheriting it, finding suitable men to marry with or without it. There is almost no male mentioned who does not have a price attached. This, one feels, is very close to the society of Bath which she was able to observe so closely. I loved it.