The quickest of glances along my bookshelves confirms that England has produced some remarkable – and remarkably prolific – diarists. I doubt there is something special in their character that makes the English particularly inclined to the sustained self-absorption, curiosity, and sheer discipline that are necessary for maintaining a diary over years or even decades, but I am at a loss to explain why so many English men and women have kept such compelling diaries. Are there great American, Irish, or Australian diarists? Probably, but none come to mind immediately.

Another oddity is the fact that the best diarists were often not especially distinguished in other respects. James Lees-Milne, for example, did valuable work saving important British houses and estates after the war and was influential in the formation of The National Trust. Alan Clark was on the fringes of power during Margaret Thatcher’s period in office, but was never himself a central figure. The same might be said of Harold Nicolson earlier in the century. Frances Partridge, a friend of everyone in the Bloomsbury set, never achieved the distinction of those to whom she was closest like Lytton Strachey or Dora Carrington. Yet all of them were wonderful diarists and their fame is assured because of the journals they kept.

Henry ‘Chips’ Channon was American by birth but adopted England and Englishness in his early twenties with the most extraordinary passion and commitment. (On the evidence of his diaries, he never passed up an opportunity to be rude about America and Americans). His apparently effortless entry into England’s high society from the 1920s onward may have been eased by a generous allowance from his father, but what sustained him there was charm, wit, and a good marriage. He had some success in politics, but his fame rests on the unusually frank diaries he kept for decades and which are now being published in their unexpurgated form for the first time. (Two further volumes are in the works).

It’s easy to poke fun at Channon. He was an incurable snob. His appetite for socializing with aristocrats was remarkable, as was his indolence, at least in the early years. A large part of the 1920s seems to have passed with little more happening than lunch with Princess so-and-so followed by dinner with the Duke of such-and-such. Although some of his descriptions of this social whirl are entertaining and insightful, the early sections of the Diaries are a bit of a slog for the reader, as they were occasionally, I suspect, for Channon himself.

Things get a lot more interesting in the 1930s when Channon’s social position gave him a close-up view of the unfolding Abdication crisis and, following his election to Parliament, in the years leading to the outbreak of war in 1939. At this point the diaries show him on the wrong side of history. Channon admired Hitler and supported appeasement. In those respects, he was like many of his class and generation, as he was in his casual, uncritical, and horrible antisemitism and racism.

It’s barely believable that only a century ago Britain was led (and largely owned) by the few families that Channon befriended. Little could they have known that within a century most of them would lose their fortunes, houses, lands, and power. And little could Channon have known that he would be the chronicler of a dying way of life and a dinosaur class. On the evidence of these diaries it’s not difficult to understand why Channon never attained high office. His snobbishness must have offended many while his vast wealth and tireless socializing must have made him seem like a dilettante. Above all, his contemporaries must have seen what is all too evident in these private journals, that despite all the charm and all the advantages, Channon suffered from a persistent ennui and self-doubt that prevented him mustering the effort required to climb the political ladder. He may have had charm in abundance, but there’s no disguising the darker sides of his personality. He had terrible judgement, was wrong on all the big political issues of the time, and was an incorrigible snob. It’s a paradox that a man like Channon should have provided one of the most vivid chronicles of a fascinating period of history.

Two summers ago I decided to devote my vacation reading to Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy. I had been told the three novels were best appreciated if read back to back. This year I did the same for the four novels by Ali Smith that have come to be known as The Seasonal Quartet. I had previously read (back in 2017) the first in the series, Autumn, and decided to re-read it before moving on to the three others.

Autumn is so many things all at once. A plea for compassion, tolerance, and love in times marked by injustice, divisiveness, and hatred of others. An appeal to look carefully and see clearly, to try to understand what is happening right in front of us and what is being done in our name, to use and value the stories and images that artists give us to make sense of it all. That makes Autumn sound high-minded and grave. It is, but its tone is light and its prose shines with all the brilliance and vividness of a Pop Art painting. It provokes sadness at people’s apparently limitless stupidity and wickedness, but leaves you hopeful for the possibility of better days transformed by uncomplicated love.

Winter, the second in the series, has no plot or character connections to Autumn, but in terms of tone, style, and cadence they are very alike. It continues and intensifies the celebration of those who look beyond the reality presented to them, those who search for deeper meanings, and those who refuse to swallow the lies and distortions served up by the ruling “elites”. The oddballs, the refuseniks, the protestors, the non-conformists, and, of course, the artists. If Pauline Boty was the artist of Autumn, in Winter we have Barbara Hepworth, representing a shift from the city to the countryside and a concentration on the dangers posed to the natural world by the shortsighted destructiveness of humans.

Spring is my favorite of the four, perhaps because the main characters felt so vividly and realistically rendered. Richard, the maker of TV films, is himself unmade by loneliness and loss of purpose. Brittany, a prison guard in a horrible detention center for “illegal immigrants”, finds her life upended by a chance encounter with a mysterious child. The two travel to the north of Scotland where they meet Richard at his lowest ebb. It’s all brilliantly done and with such compassion and humor. At a time of cruelty, stupidity, and dishonesty in public life, Smith calls us to hold on to individual kindness, watchfulness, and honesty.

Summer brings the quartet to a perfect close, gathering the strands of the earlier novels and binding them together into something that by now is obviously a perfect whole. The full sweep of the series becomes clear, embracing a century marked by cruelty, horror, division, and ignorance and a present that shows all the signs of having learned nothing and of being more than enthusiastic about repeating it all over again. But, in the midst of it all, is the potential for individual acts of love, of courage, of seeing clearly, of standing up for what’s right, of not being fooled.

What an extraordinary achievement this series is. Anyone who has lost faith in fiction, or anyone who never had that faith to begin with, should read these four novels.

I enjoyed reading this debut novel by Chris Power. It’s a peculiar hybrid. On the surface it’s a straightforward mystery. An English, Berlin-based novelist (Robert), struggling to write, is approached by another writer (Patrick) with a story to tell of Russian oligarchs and their dark deeds. Can Patrick be believed and trusted or is he just another drunken fantasist looking for attention? Much of this is handled very well by Power. He builds tension nicely and keeps the reader guessing until the end. But he’s more ambitious than many thriller writers and teases us with questions about stories and their complex connections with truth. Who, if anyone, owns a story? Can there ever be only one version of a tale or is a story something that shifts and changes as it’s handed from one teller to another, a thing that belongs to everyone equally, constantly available for renewal and re-shaping?

I wonder what Samuel Beckett would have thought of the pandemic. Surely he would have smiled at the sight of an all-masked audience watching one of his plays – especially one called Happy Days – from socially distanced chairs. Beckett completed the English version of Happy Days in May 1961, so Trevor Nunn’s staging of the play at The Riverside Studios in Hammersmith marks its 60th anniversary.

What an extraordinary play it is. Winnie, encased in the earth up to her waist in Act 1, and up to her neck in Act 2, speaks into the void, compelled to communicate and longing to be heard. Her monologue, punctuated occasionally by comments and groans from Willie (mostly hidden by the mound in which Winnie is held), is a stream of memories, prayers, and snatches of song and poetry. As with all Beckett’s work, you’re left wondering. Is Winnie’s plight a statement about despair and helplessness, or is it a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of nothingness and meaninglessness? Probably both.

It felt so good to be back in a theatre and to see such a remarkable staging of what is a classic of the modern canon. Even in conditions as strange as these, perhaps especially in conditions as strange as these, no one is better than Beckett on the essentials of human existence.

News reports remind us almost daily of the tragedy of forced migration. They tell us of tens of thousands of women, men, and children risking their lives every day to flee from unbearable conditions in their homelands. Behind the stories, of course, stand individual tragedies. Every migrant’s story is uniquely painful and poignant. We must try as far as we can to differentiate and individualize and avoid the trap of seeing nothing more than an impersonal mass of victims. Crowds dull our sensitivity and compassion.

We’re going to have to confront the reality of mass migration far more urgently than we have so far. Climate change looks likely to displace millions from their homelands, creating a crisis of a scale we have never seen before. We cannot look away. If we fail to act now, the horrors we have seen in recent years – the bodies of refugees washed up on distant shores, the appalling conditions endured in “temporary” camps – will be trivial in comparison to what’s coming.

Forced migration is only one form of exile. There are others. Think of the agonies of those who choose to separate themselves from their homelands rather than to endure the conditions that prevail there: perhaps intolerance, repression, restrictions on freedom of speech, the inability to be, in the place you were born, the person you want to be. Such persecution and repression have throughout history found their expression in the destruction of libraries, the burning and banning of books. Books are dangerous for autocrats. Condensed expressions of individuality and imagination easily distributed to ignite the minds and stir the feelings of others. So much easier to destroy the buildings, the shelves, the catalogs, and the books themselves, and to kill the librarians, the publishers, and the writers, than to allow ideas and emotions to circulate freely….

Such themes were at the heart of an exhibition or installation, library of exile, created and curated by the renowned ceramicist and author, Edmund de Waal. He made a collection of two thousand books by writers forced to live in exile. Some of the books came from his personal library and those of family members. Inside each book was placed a bookplate, and visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to take a favorite book from the shelves and write their names in the bookplate. Alongside the books, de Waal placed porcelain vases he had made especially for the installation. The exhibition traveled to places that in the past have witnessed the destruction of books – Dresden, Venice, London – and ended its journey at the University of Mosul where, in 2015, the forces of Daesh/IS destroyed the library and burned more than a million books and manuscripts.

I would have loved to see the library of exile and I like to think that one day I’ll see it in Iraq, a place I visited as a librarian more than thirty years ago. Until then, I’ll have to make do with the lovely book about it published by The British Museum.

The stretch of the Thames between Putney and Hammersmith bridges is typically quiet on a Sunday morning. Little disturbs the surface of the sludgy brown water, other than the occasional crew from one of the many rowing clubs based on this part of the river. It’s a pretty and peaceful place to walk. Plane, ash, and willow trees overhang the path near Bishop’s Park and residents have planted gardens of wildflowers. Swans, ducks, and geese are plentiful. Maybe that’s one reason why artists and writers have based themselves here for so long. William Morris lived at 26 Upper Mall for nearly twenty years and established his Kelmscott Press nearby at 16 Upper Mall in 1891. Eric Ravilious lived just around the corner. Today it’s a haven for those walking their dogs or those looking for a pint in one of the many 18th century pubs close to Hammersmith Bridge (The Dove and The Blue Anchor are especially good). For the lucky few, there’s a table at the famed River Cafe.

The Thames is one of London glories. After centuries of neglect and pollution, a huge effort has been made to clean it up and make it more accessible to Londoners. That far-sighted investment has paid off. There’s nothing better than a walk along it to remind oneself that few, if any, cities can match London for beauty and tradition. I don’t even pretend to be impartial …

London has more historic palaces than many people realize. Some are amongst the most recognizable buildings in the world, while others are overlooked, tucked away in neighborhoods that attract few tourists. Fulham Palace, home to the Bishops of London since the 8th century, is certainly one of the latter. It sits, largely hidden from view and bordered by a busy road and the riverbank, in an affluent residential area. I’ve often wondered how many drivers, stuck in traffic on their way to and from Hammersmith and Putney, are aware of the little gem just behind the trees.

The palace itself has been much modified over the centuries. The various bishops who called the place home seemed to like re-modelling and tinkering, so what’s left today is something of a patchwork of styles. The oldest surviving part of the palace is the pretty redbrick Tudor courtyard that dates back to 1495. The grounds and gardens (13 acres in all) are lovely and attract local residents on sunny days, many of whom may never have set foot in the palace itself. Bishop Compton (17th century) and Bishop Terrick (18th century) were celebrated botanists and filled the grounds with rare and exotic plants and trees, many of which survive to this day.

Although the pandemic has closed the palace’s interior to visitors for the time being (it’s expected to re-open at some point in July 2021), the gardens are open. If the sun is shining, as it was when I was there recently, take a picnic and enjoy one of London’s hidden oases of tranquility.

Perhaps it’s the tourists, or its slightly sordid edge, or just the sense of transience that clings to it, but I’ve never really liked Soho. I’m happy enough to grab a quick drink or a bite to eat there, but it’s not a place I like to linger. Soho has it fans and its detractors – and has for centuries. It’s one of those neighborhoods that invariably attracts slightly nostalgic disparagement. “It’s not what it used to be in the 1950s” (or 60s, 70s, 80s, pick your decade). London’s sex trade no longer has its center there, but it clings on in a few places, hold-outs against the tide of gentrification that brought PR and media companies, members’ clubs, and coffee shop chains. It’s here that Fiona Mozley has chosen to set her second novel, Hot Stew (a “stew” being a word used in medieval times for a brothel).

The heart of the plot is a series of battles. A battle between those who call a place home and those for whom it’s just another investment opportunity. A battle between those who want to preserve a little of the past, however sordid, and those pushing forward to a future of bland uniformity offering little more than expensive apartments and offices. Which side are you on – the squalid and colorful or the bland and safe? And where do your sympathies lie – with the exploiters or the exploited?

Hot Stew is vivid and colorful (much like Soho itself), and occasionally funny and poignant. I enjoyed the experience of reading it, but I doubt it will leave the sort of lasting mark that Mozley’s debut novel (Elmet) left. The imaginative effort is impressive, but I don’t think the effort should be so visible.

I like very much what Jhumpa Lahiri has done in Whereabouts, building a portrait of a woman in forty-six vignettes, each not much more than a few pages long. Every short scene frames and focuses the narrator, building her character much like a movie might, taking the reader step by step and deeper and deeper into her solitude. The challenge the novelist sets herself is an ambitious one because each short chapter invites close, separate examination much like a collection of short stories might. The brevity somehow encourages close scrutiny, and that sometimes exposes an occasional flaw in the brilliance and a certain unevenness in the overall texture of the novel. No matter. This is an accomplished and subtly accretive study of urban isolation that cleverly sedates you and entangles you in a person’s inner life.

Klara is an AF (an Artificial Friend), a humanoid robot that parents, in this near-future dystopia set in the United States, buy to be company for their children. Klara, though not the most up-to-date model, is quite advanced and has been programmed to have a range of human characteristics and emotions – pity, anxiety, fear, and even possibly love. Klara is purchased to be Josie’s friend. Her duties go little further than being a companion to Josie, a sickly teenager who lives at home with her mother and Melania Housekeeper (a nice touch). When Josie’s condition starts to deteriorate, Klara pleads with The Sun to restore her with its healing powers.

Ishiguro’s imagined future is a grim one, but perhaps not much more grim than our present. It’s a place with a rigid caste system in which the “raised” are the elite, a place where the homeless still sleep in doorways and pollution still obscures the sun, and a place where children do almost everything through their “rectangles”. But Ishiguro’s main preoccupation here isn’t social commentary. It’s more to do with what distinguishes human beings in a world of increasingly clever and sentient machines. If we can programme a machine to love and to feel pity, what makes a human a human? Maybe it isn’t the capacity to love that makes us unique, but the ability to inspire love in others …

Klara and The Sun, written in that deceptively simple, crystal-clear prose familiar to anyone who knows Ishiguro’s novels, is unsettling and captivating. I’m not sure that it’s the masterpiece that many reviewers have said it is, but it’s certainly as thought-provoking as anything I’ve read for a long time.