Our picks this week
Order these books, and hundreds more, from Backstory:
Behind the Curtain: Free: Coming of Age at the End of History by Lea Ypi. I loved this book from its opening line: “I never asked myself about the meaning of freedom until the day I hugged Stalin.” A fantastic memoir by an LSE professor about growing up in Communist Albania. The slices of everyday life are fascinating (Coke cans were so prized that families would display them on doilies). Even more so is her first-hand account of the consequences of “shock therapy” as capitalism and democracy were introduced overnight and she struggled to come to terms with how her parents kept from her all her childhood their opposition to the now-fallen regime - Tom
In cold blood: Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep. I love it when non-fiction reads like fiction. This fits that bill in spades: a pacey, suspenseful retelling of a mystery that the novelist Harper Lee investigated but never published, which also serves to take us closer to Lee and her friendship with Truman Capote. Brilliant - Tom
The man from south of the river comes south of the river: Gateshead’s own Sebastian Payne, of the FT, will be signing copies of his excellent book Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England at the Backstory pop-up in Balham a week on Saturday - 2nd July - at 2.30pm. A Times, Telegraph and Guardian book of the year, it’s out in paperback this Thursday, with a rather lovely cover. Pre-order it now and I’ll ask him to sign one for you if you like.
Yesterday’s stall bestsellers
1. A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East and Lords of the Desert: Britain’s Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East by James Barr, who came to do a signing yesterday. I have five signed copies of each left, so order now.
2. Oi Aardvark! by Kes Gray and Jim Field. A delightful picture book from the “Oi Frog!” series.
3. Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney. Still new in paperback.
4. France: An Adventure History by Graham Robb. Holidays on people’s minds?
5. The Dark Remains by Ian Rankin and William McIlvanney. Crime for the beach.
I swore I’d never sit another exam after resorting to quoting that day’s Times editorial in my international relations final exam at uni. And, besides a sweat-inducing attempt to prove I could write 100 words of shorthand a minute, I’ve stuck to the rule. But now I’m going back to school. Bar school.
Next week I will be taking the British Institute of Innkeeping’s Level 2 Award. I will have to prove my knowledge of the Licensing Act 2003, alcohol units and percentages, and of the four objectives that councils look for from a licensee: prevention of crime and disorder; public safety; prevention of public nuisance; and protection of children from harm.
All rather serious for a cheeky glass of red, you might think. But I’m quite enjoying swotting up again. The qualifications company even provides mock exams and little online tutorials I’ve been working through. I’ve dug out some multicoloured highlighters and made myself bullet point memos.
None of this is for the booze license itself, by the way. I need to pass this test (and a criminal records check) to apply for my own personal licence. That will qualify me to put myself down as a “Designated Premises Supervisor” (DPS, in the inevitable abbreviation) on an application once I have a premises.
So, while I’m revising my weights and measures, I thought it might be fun to ask you what you think I should stock. My idea is to have a counter down one wall of the shop, doubling as a bar and a till/counter space. What, if anything, would you like to drink there? (Clicking on one of the links automatically registers your vote.) And hit reply to this email or leave a comment if you have any recommendations/thoughts on anything else that might work.
Poll: What would you drink at the Backstory bar?
1. Red wine
2. White wine
3. Rosé
4. Fizz
5. Beer
6. G&T
7. Cocktails
9. Coffee
10. Tea
11. Soft drinks
In the meantime, wish me luck with the exam… Bottoms up!
Tom
In the papers
You can buy these books from Backstory
Agent Twister: The True Story Behind the Scandal that Gripped the Nation by Philip Augar and Keely Winstone. The authors “lovingly retell” the story of John Stonehouse MP, “the only known case of a UK minister spying for a communist state”, says the FT. “Stonehouse, a former aviation and telecoms minister in Harold Wilson’s first Labour government, faked his own death in 1974, leaving his clothes in a Miami beach cabin while he fled to Australia, hoping his family and friends would assume he had drowned.”
Shrimp to Wale: South Korea from the Forgotten War to K-Pop by Ramon Pacheco Pardo. The New Statesman finds this “an engaging account” of the country’s politics and culture by “a professor of international relations [who] declares his love for South Korea, weaving his personal recollections (and travel tips) into the narrative”.
Blood, Fire and Gold: The Story of Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici by Estelle Paranque. “In a story written with verve and passion”, Paranque shows us “the other woman in Elizabeth’s life” - not Mary, Queen of Scots, but “the portly and pudgy-faced Queen Mother of France”. The Times reckons it is “a marvellous story of a relationship between two powerful women in an age when females were believed to be unsuited to the exercise of government”.
We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets. The young narrator of this Dutch novel has quit her job as a content moderator at a social media company, “reviewing hundreds of problematic social media posts and deciding…which ones to take down”. She is invited by her former colleagues, on whom the work has taken a significant mental toll, to take part in a legal action against the company and “the novel takes the form of a letter addressed to their lawyer”. The Guardian argues it “offers little in the way of psychological acuity… a pity because the novel’s central conceit - the idea of viewing interpersonal relationships through the same prism as online video nasties - is genuinely intriguing.”