Lie back with a masterpiece . . . and the world’s greatest spy
NON-FICTION MARCUS BERKMANN THE LAST LEONARDO by Ben Lewis (William Collins £20, 416 pp)
SALVAtOr MUNdi, (pictured right) was the first ‘new’ painting by Leonardo da Vinci to be authenticated in 99 years. its discoverers paid $1,175 (£940) for it at auction in 2005; nine years later it was sold on for $ 450 million (£ 358 million), making it the most expensive painting of all time.
But is it the real thing? Ben Lewis isn’t sure, or at least he isn’t telling. this beautifully paced book, a history of the painting and all the people who’ve owned it, reads like a thriller. So much money is at stake it makes your head spin.
Not for the first time the unabashed greed and corruption of the art market is laid bare, but i’m not sure i have ever read a volume of art history so quickly and with such pleasure. Lewis also wrote a book about Soviet humour called Hammer And tickle, but i think we can forgive him that.
STILL WATER: THE DEEP LIFE OF THE POND by John Lewis-Stempel (Doubleday £14.99, 304 pp)
iF YOU’Ve read any of Lewis-Stempel’s nature books before, you’ll know roughly what to expect: dense, almost poetic prose, and an extraordinarily detailed capacity for observing and delineating the natural world.
Lewis-Stempel, who is almost indecently prolific, sees and hears things others will never see and hear, and he can write about them as no one else can.
His original plan was to visit ponds up and down Britain and ‘ write a watery travelogue’; instead he just sat and observed his own pond for 12 absorbing months.
Sound boring? it really isn’t. it’s a high-wire act for sure, and his habitually gloomy ecological message may make you seriously contemplate throwing yourself under a bus, but as always hi s book is saved b y easy charm, his gimlet eye and some beautiful writing.
i keep reading his books trying to work out how he does it, and i haven’t got there yet.
HAPPY OLD ME by Hunter Davies (S&S £16.99, 304 pp)
tHere’S a photo on the cover of Hunter davies’s umpteenth book showing the author, now 82, sitting in shorts, looking tanned, relaxed and almost indecently cheerful, and that’s what this book is essentially about.
theoretically the third volume of his memoirs, Happy Old Me really only covers the past two or three years of his life, since his wife of 55 years, novelist Margaret Forster, died of cancer.
So this is partly autobiography, partly self-help book, but mainly it’s a meditation on living a long life and trying to enjoy it to the hilt. As ever davies writes with a delightful, self- deprecatory wit, but his book is also genuinely useful, full of nuggets of wisdom born of long life experience.
i intend to give it to my own mother, who may be the only person in the world who’s even happier than Hunter.
THE FULL MONTY by Monty Panesar (White Owl £20, 202 pp)
AS A teAM game played by individuals, cricket is notoriously full of eccentrics, and few come odder than Monty Panesar.
the first Sikh to play for england and a formidably talented left-arm spinner, he made an instant impact with his very first wicket in test cricket — that of Sachin tendulkar, the best batsman in the world.
Although the second half of his career was marred by mental health issues, Panesar brought a childlike glee to test cricket and was loved by all (other than possibly tendulkar).
His autobiography doesn’t skirt the difficult themes, but in the main it’s an uncommonly cheerful book, full of jokes and jeux d’esprit.
Panesar is now 37 so his toplevel cricket career is done, but he’s still a popular figure and unusually honest about his failings. Only the hardesthearted of us would not wish him well.
QUICKSAND TALES by Keggie Carew (Canongate £16.99, 272 pp)
Keggie CAreW is a former artist in her early 60s who wrote an award- winning biography of her father as he slipped into dementia. this book is very different, a memoir of sorts, concentrating on the many and various misadventures in her own life. Her tales would seem tall if told by anyone else, but what makes the book sing is that you completely believe her. talked into buying a camel in tunisia, burgling a house in ireland by mistake, sitting next to the actor Sam Neill at a dinner party without realising it’s Sam Neill, she relates each horror with a winning humour and the natural talent of the born storyteller. Sensitive readers may have to pause between chapters to recover their equilibrium, and every reader will end the book astonished that she’s still alive. Uncategorisable, unignorable and unique, this is already one of my books of the year.
AN IMPECCABLE SPY by Owen Matthews (Bloomsbury £25, 448 pp)
riCHArd SOrge may well be the most notorious Soviet spy you have never heard of.
during World War ii, pretending to be a foreign correspondent in tokyo, he ran a network of german and Japanese agents so successfully that his intelligence actually changed the course of the war in the Soviets’ favour.
His best friend was the german Ambassador to Japan, who spoke regularly to Hitler. His best Japanese friend was a member of the cabinet’s inner advisory council, who spoke regularly to the Japanese prime minister.
At the same time Sorge was a roaring drunk, a serial seducer of women (especially his friends’ wives) and a charming mountebank who essentially hid in plain sight, almost daring the authorities to accuse him of being a spy.
Owen Matthews, who wrote the wonderful Stalin’s Children, has produced a splendidly rounded portrait of this madman, whom John Le Carré has called ‘the spy to end spies’.