schopflin's reviews
719 reviews

A really excellent, readable, informative and quite moving biography. I actually don't know Tippett's music all that well, but it's inspired me to listen. And the fall in his popularity - I can't remember the last time I heard anything by him on Radio 3 not from Child of Our Time - is really quite fascinating. 

Contrived and clever. I didn't like it very much but it certainly turned the pages. I am usually a huge Cara Hunter fan, and I am always happy to see good satire on television formats (which this is) but I actually think Janice Hallett did this kind of thing better in The Appeal. 

This is a re-read of what was my favourite Trollope. I still like it, but possibly for very different reasons. Twenty years ago I found the alcoholism chapters prolonged and difficult. Now I think it's one of the most powerful parts of the book. I still love it for it's amazingly mature study of the question 'What is a gentleman? What is a gentlewoman?'.

Another clever pageturner from Cara Hunter. I don't mind the fact that the characters aren't as enticing as, say, an Elly Griffith or Jane Casey. It centres the plot which is, as ever, disturbing and ingenious. 

I love a campus novel although conversely I am not mad about Oxbridge novels. But here the family story won out over the setting. I was trying to remember when a novel about teenagers last made me squirm with recognition so much  I realised it was the same author's Almost English. Ultimately I am unsure about the mixture of comedy and tragedy as the extreme farcical elements seemed to dampen down the emotional connection. I would still recommend it though. 

Genuinely interesting look at the construction blacklisting scandal. My initial interest was the relationship between the information gathering and the law, but it's impossible not to be shocked and moved by the stories - individuals unable to work because they had exercised their legal right to join a union. The chapters about police monitoring start to build a picture of a deeply paranoid culture spending millions on surveillance when most employees are doing nothing more radical than attending a committee meeting. This isn't the most fluently written book and it shows signs of having been assembled over a number of years but it is excellent testimony of its story. 

For the first 50 pages or so I thought this book was trite and simplistic and I wondered why I once thought Jonathan Coe such a brilliant comic novelist, capable of both satire and empathy. Then I got drawn in and couldn't put it down. There was brilliant satire and lots of moving stuff too. 

This took me longer than I thought it would because I had to keep putting it down. It's an intelligent, empathetic book but it does plunge you into despair. Using the testimony of 'Everday Sexism' contributors (mostly women but one very powerful contribution from a man) is powerful and moving. 

A cover to cover pleasure, sensory delights and laugh out loud funny writing. Every home should have one. 

Another highly readable pageturner. Laugh out loud funny at times. An enjoyable world to be in for a few hours.