
“The Hidden Language of Cats” by Dr. Sarah Brown (published by Penguin Books)
Paws for thought in catalogue of quirks
Sorry to say, but for most of my life I didn’t give a hoot about cats, or most animals for that matter. They just didn’t enter my orbit and there was more to think about. And didn’t cats often seem to have a sort of evil look? Now, I unexpectedly have two of the creatures, and they’re great. And I also have this book, which surely is going to teach me much about them.

“The Picnic, An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain” by Matthew Longo (published by The Bodley Head)
Eat, drink and be free
Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of the newly reunified Germany, described the Pan-European Picnic near Hungarian city Sopron on August 19, 1989 as where the “first stone was removed from the Berlin Wall”. For Assistant Professor Matthew Longo it was “the initial tug by which the ...

“The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama” by Ben Macintyre (published by Viking)
Inside the action for a rip-roaring read
Only the very toughest of soldiers with supreme physical fitness and mental toughness can join the British Army’s elite and ultra-secretive Special Air Service unit. One test is a 64-kilometre hike over unfamiliar mountain terrain carrying a 25-kilogram pack and a weapon. Three candidates ...
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"Blind Man with a Pistol” by Chester Himes (published by Penguin Books)
Black man with a grievance
Each of the eight book covers in Chester Himes’ Harlem Detectives series is a jumble of chopped-up images that perfectly represent the African-American author’s haunt, the hotspot black neighbourhood of New York City where whiteys fear to tread. "Blind Man with a Pistol” is ...

"The Big Gold Dream" by Chester Himes (published by Penguin Books)
Crime with humour, humour with crime
Harlem, the black district of New York City, is a notoriously dodgy place, and ace detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson need to be on the dodgy side too in order to keep up with goings-on. If they have to bash someone ...

"The Crazy Kill" by Chester Himes (published by Penguin Books)
Harlem, where anything can happen and who needs sense?
The story goes – and this is the real-life story not the novel – that after Chester Himes left the United States in the early 1950s to escape racism, he settled in France and, starting to build a good reputation as a writer, was ...

"If He Hollers Let Him Go" by Chester Himes (published by Penguin Books)
Debut novel is a sit-up-and-take-notice effort
Chester Himes was convicted of armed robbery at the age of 19 in 1928 and sentenced to 20- to 25-years hard labour in Ohio State Penitentiary. He ordered a Remington typewriter and began to write, developing his craft. He was paroled in 1936 after ...

"The Hollywood Raj, How Brits Reigned in the Golden Age of the Movies” by Sheridan Morley (published by Dean Street Press)
Deerstalkers and stiff upper lips on the boulevards
The "Hollywood Raj” of expatriate British actors was not so long ago when Sheridan Morley’s book was published in 1983. As he acknowledged, even then many of the performers, writers and directors in the Anglo community had been dead for several years, so he ...

“A Talent to Amuse: A Life of Noël Coward” by Sheridan Morley (published by Dean Street Press)
Many triumphs but ’The Master’ had disasters too
The first time Sheridan Morley ever met Noël Coward was when The Times newspaper sent him to interview “The Master” at the Savoy Hotel in London in 1964. Morley confesses he did not have an open mind, and was ready to meet an embittered ...

“Memoirs of a Professional Cad” by George Sanders (published by Dean Street Press)
Sonofabitch on screen, in life a ’dear, dear boy’
Film star George Sanders was everything a real man might wish to be – handsome, urbane, famous, groomed and with a purring baritone. It made him a catch for the ladies, and his four marriages included not one but two of the three Gábor ...

"The Secret Life of Ealing Studios, Britain’s Favourite Film Studio" by Robert Sellers (published by Dean Street Press)
Screen treasures were British to the backbone
In books and other texts, declares Robert Sellers, Ealing Studios is usually examined from the viewpoint of the academic outsider, and the films themselves studied from the perspective of a critic mainly concerned with their cultural aspect and social bearing. That’s fine as far ...
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"The Big Gold Dream" by Chester Himes (published by Penguin Books)
Crime with humour, humour with crime
Harlem, the black district of New York City, is a notoriously dodgy place, and ace detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson need to be on the dodgy side too in order to keep up with goings-on. If they have to bash someone ...

"Blind Man with a Pistol” by Chester Himes (published by Penguin Books)
Black man with a grievance
Each of the eight book covers in Chester Himes’ Harlem Detectives series is a jumble of chopped-up images that perfectly represent the African-American author’s haunt, the hotspot black neighbourhood of New York City where whiteys fear to tread. "Blind Man with a Pistol” is ...

“The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama” by Ben Macintyre (published by Viking)
Inside the action for a rip-roaring read
Only the very toughest of soldiers with supreme physical fitness and mental toughness can join the British Army’s elite and ultra-secretive Special Air Service unit. One test is a 64-kilometre hike over unfamiliar mountain terrain carrying a 25-kilogram pack and a weapon. Three candidates ...
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“A Promenade in Parc Munkácsy” by Alexander York (published by Austin Macauley)
Colourful characters twist and turn in crime caper
Debut novelist Alexander York has seemingly gone for filmic atmosphere rather than minor style issues such as crossing the “t”s and dotting the “i”s, and Hungarians can be along for the scenic ride as the action sets out from England and passes numerous Magyarország ...

“Greyhound” by C.S. Forester (published by Penguin Books)
Dogged by death in the deep
C.S. Forester died in 1966 and he is not forgotten in The Budapest Times office, where we have a nice little collection of 18 of his books. But they don’t include “Greyhound”, and in fact we were a bit puzzled when it was published ...

Douglas Stuart wins Booker Prize for ‘Shuggie Bain’
30-plus editors rejected story of tough childhood
This year’s Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world, was notable for having four debut novelists on this year’s shortlist of six books, and the award has gone to one of them, Douglas Stuart, with his autobiographical “Shuggie Bain”, ...