RETRO

FAME IS THE SPUR by Howard Spring (Apollo £14)

SPANNING the years 1860 to 1939, this mammoth masterpiece is a devastating memorial to the old-time Labour party. From the poverty of Manchester’s slums — clattering clogs, soup kitchens, moribund infants — fame- seeker John Shawcross rises to the House of Lords via politics’ greasy pole.

Master-minding demos and strikes, he rouses workers to protest at the gap between rich and poor. The book throngs with strong women; details of heroic suffragette hunger-strikers being force-fed are unforgettable.

Discarding old friends and socialist principles, Shawcross, now a Lord with a grand house, servants and a son at Eton, joins the very class he opposed. He spends his disillusioned last days hoping for a new generation ‘to blow on the sparks of hope’.

BEST SHORT STORIES by W. Somerset Maugham (Macmillan £9.99)

THERE’S not one dud in this terrific collection. You enter an enticing world of expats, colonial types and, in The Verger, a London church where a conscientious old verger is sacked by the snobbish new vicar.

Two of these famous stories have been made into films: Rain, in which a vulnerable prostitute finds God but is raped by the very priest she trusted, and The Letter, about a respectable rubber-planter’s wife on trial for murder, who is pleading innocence but could be guilty.

Each story has a brilliant twist and indelible characters — human nature always manages to surprise.

PLAY IT AS IT LAYS by Joan Didion (4th Estate £8.99)

DIDION’S book contains a tantalising puff from Barack Obama, lauding her as ‘ one of our sharpest, most respected observers of American politics and culture’. If so, this depiction of American culture may evoke disgust.

Corrupted by hedonistic Hollywood, Maria, 31, is a rich, pill-popping, morbidly depressed actress, and mother to a braindamaged child in care. She spends days driving aimlessly up and down deserted freeways.

Casual sex, abortion, sex-crazed men, vomiting, violence . . . good grief, there’s no let-up. Ghastly.