25 Books Like This New Noise

I'd heard about this famous book many years before I actually got around to reading it. What I loved about this book was its originality.

I am always reminded about Orwell's book whenever I hear phrases like ‘ thought police’ or ‘big brother’, which have become part of our everyday language. Probably one of the most influential books ever written. For me, the message of Orwell’s book is that the State will always win.

The pairing of a kosher London Business School professor with a rock-solid broadcasting analysis track record and a style commentator with none. Nearly half the book is made up of footnotes and references. They build a powerful case against the right-wing (and not so right-wing) rag, tag, and bobtail who expend their intellectual effort on undermining the BBC, trying to destroy it or worse ‘defund it’. The trouble is that post-Brexit rational discussion in the UK is stilted and limited. The BBC has acquired an army of unexpected enemies. The usual suspects of friends are proving somewhat muted on this front in the Culture Wars. A hard but good read.

Much of the writing on the BBC is ill-formed opinion. Few facts. This book is partial but very solid academically. It should, but will not, put some arguments to bed. Will it ‘save’ the BBC. Watch this space.

Life as a BBC Executive is like being a frog on a pond of lilies. You start off on a small lily leaf then you hop onto another get bigger ad infinitum until you either drown or become a prince. Mark Thompson is the latter. His last job was President of the New York Times, Roger Mosey is the former. He eventually ran out of BBC lilies to grace and is now head of a Cambridge College; firmly outside the tent ‘looking ‘in. His progress before had been large hops IRN Pennine Radio to BBC local radio to Network editing the World at One and Today. Then to the glamour bit TV-Editor of TV news then Head of Sport and the cherry on the cake-supremo of the 2012 London Olympics. That fortnight was the BBC at its’ supreme best. Roger was the pinnacle. From there the whole pond should… show more.

Will is the Kosygin of the BBC. He survived many changes of regime ending up close to the Britain Himalayan summit as Managing Director Television. Along the way, he made some good programmes and developed some innovations like using a small presentation studio to make the likes of The Old Grey Whistle Test. Later, his documentary features department in Kensington House was huge and productive. Will may have been the ace BBC politician but he was and still is very charming. I know he accosted me in the Waitrose oxford car park many years after I had left the BBC and that has led to a friendship of sorts. He is Oxford/Town Boy -through and through. A local lad whose headmaster in his Walton Manor primary school ‘helped’ him by hinting and more through the 11plus. It was up hills and career mountains from there. Will is ‘Old… show more.

I do not think any list relating to fantasy books would be complete without an entry from David Gemmell, a true gold standard of the genre. Legend is another book I first fell in love with as a teenager. I loved the simple enough premise: countless enemies at the gates of a fortress, and if the fortress falls, the Drenai Empire falls.

The story also introduces what I believe to be one of the most iconic heroes in heroic fantasy, the Deathwalker—Druss The Legend. While there were battles like nothing I had ever read before it was the interaction between the characters and the fellowship of the embattled defenders which brought me into this world fully as I read. The expert craft of the story made me really care about each of the characters and their fate. 

There is an expertly realised villain in Ulric, the leader of the enemy,… show more.

Most music biographies read like a biography, but this one feels as visceral and memorable as a James Brown show. James McBridge is best known for his National Book Award-winning novels, but he’s equally adept at nonfiction.

He’s only written one music biography, but this is one of the most thoughtful books I’ve ever read. Instead of starting at the beginning of James Brown’s life, he starts by explaining why a chronological biography would never do the artist justice. The result is a series of stories about the musician and a refreshing take on the genre. 

The workings of the state and the actions of state functionaries have long supplied the essential narrative informing our understanding of Ottoman history. This new volume by University of Chicago partner scholars is the first to give a platform to a wide spectrum of voices hailing from across the sultan's multilingual realm. Women and men, Muslims, Jews and Christians, prisoners and prostitutes, mystics and scholars, and a host of others, reach across the centuries to beguile us with their dreams and legends, anecdotes and jokes, biographies, and hagiographies. Although billed also as a textbook, as is customary these days in order to reach the widest readership, this book is for anyone who seeks affinity with the people of the early modern Ottoman world.

This book is a literary biography that reads like a detective novel. I found it to be gripping, shocking, hilarious, and tragic. I also consider it a great work of literature in its own right, effectively reinventing the genre of biography and turning it into an artwork forged in the era of Raymond Chandler. It was first published in 1934, but has been through many reissues, including with the alternative subtitle, Genius or Charlatan? 

That question captures perfectly the state of mind in which I was left after finishing Symons’s account of the life of Frederick Rolfe, who called himself Baron Corvo, as he swanned around southern Europe in the 1900s. While Corvo was a writer—he wrote a series of over-ripe novels, most famously Hadrian the Seventh—his life is more the stuff of the unbelievable potboiler than the usual tedious life of authors tied to their typewriters.

And… show more.

This is so creative. I loved it.

Carmel uses her knowledge of women in early Christianity to create a life (“biography”) of St Benedict’s twin sister, Scholastica. Carmel uses the format for Pope Gregory’s Life of Benedict in a way that is quite plausible.

She begins by imaging, from the history we do have, a childhood for the two of them—and her teacher is called Sophia. Scholastica comes across as wise, and courageous, and a leader in her own right.

Meet a saint who confronts warring gang leaders, gives wise counsel (including to her brother), establishes monasteries, and leads an ascetical movement of women. Carmel retells the famous story of the last meeting of Benedict and Scholastica, then reimagines the death and burial of the twins. 

This is a delight.

Freeman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, four-volume account of Lee remains the gold standard among the numerous biographies of the general. Freeman tirelessly examined the documentary record, and wrote a compelling narrative of Lee’s eventful life. The coverage here of the crucial battles of the Civil War is outstanding. One must be careful with Freeman’s biography, however. Freeman is unabashedly devoted to Lee and is extremely biased in his opinions. In the final volume, Freeman admits that he came “to respect and to love” the subject of his biography. In the third volume, which I recommend here, Freeman argues that Lee would have been successful at Gettysburg, if not for the insubordination of General James Longstreet. The Wilderness Campaign is also examined in this volume. Despite all of the hagiography, Freeman’s R.E. Lee remains an essential work for anyone interested in the Confederate general.