The elephant in the room
Or should that be stag...
Our picks this week
Order these books, and hundreds more, from Backstory:
Paved with gold: Serious Money: Walking Plutocratic London by Caroline Knowles. I loved this fascinating field guide to wealthy London, from Shoreditch to Mayfair, by a sociologist and director of the British Academy’s cities and infrastructure programme. Packed with sharply-observed insights into how the super-rich make their money and how they spend it. Gently written, with warmth and real curiosity - Tom
RIP Dervla Murphy: The extraordinary travel writer died last Sunday, aged 90. Her remarkable writing endures, not least A Place Apart, in which she recounts cycling around Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles, chatting to Provos and diehard Unionists in pubs and getting far more out of them than a battle-hardened war correspondent ever would. Full of insight and rare empathy. - Tom
Just the week for Bunting: Ceremony of Innocence by Madeleine Bunting. In this political thriller, a junior journalist learns that her friend has gone missing in Egypt. Set between London, the English countryside and the Middle East, it's a gripping read. - Rhys
Your choice: Our handy new form means you can now order pretty much any book from Backstory, so long as it’s in print. We’ll get back to you the same day and can usually get the book to you in 3-5 days (sometimes sooner)
It turns out it isn’t only toddlers who should never leave the house without a change of clothing. A few weeks ago I was on my way to a trendy restaurant (the sort that serves “natural” wine) on a warm spring evening, strolling down an avenue, the last of the day’s sunshine trickling down through the leaves. All was well with the world.
Well, until something rather less savoury also trickled down from above. Right down my shirt, as it happens. Fortunately, I’d thrown a hoodie in my bag in case the evening grew cool, so I threw my shirt in a bin and spent the entire evening wearing just my jeans and a hoodie. Silicon Valley chic, or at least it would have been without the bird shit.
I tell you this not so you can chuckle at my misfortune, though I imagine you might. Instead, I share this as a supposed promise of good fortune. And, my goodness, I could do with it.
So far, my timing with Backstory hasn’t exactly been perfect. I first started plotting the bookshop back when people talked unironically about the “Roaring Twenties”, an economic boom that would be unleashed when the pandemic ended and we emerged from our homes, blinking and buying. And, with even better timing, I handed in my notice the day before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The economic consequences of the war obviously pale in comparison with the unimaginable suffering of the people of Ukraine, but they are nonetheless significant, particularly to households on the lowest budgets. Energy and food markets have been upended, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis in Britain. There is talk of the economist’s dreaded twosome: stagflation - when prices shoot up even while the economy stagnates. Even if Rishi Sunak’s giveaway this week eases the pinch a little, phrases like “emergency budget” do not normally signify a particularly rosy time for businesses.
It won’t surprise you to learn I’ve been spending quite a lot of time thinking about what all of this means for Backstory. So I asked my friend and ex-Economist colleague, the economic journalist Duncan Weldon (the title of whose history of the British economy, Muddling Through, also sounds like pretty good advice). I thought I’d share his reply, sent before Sunak’s latest splurge:
Are you asking as a friend seeking reassurance that they’ve definitely made a good decision? Or as a serious ‘is now a good time to launch a consumer facing business in Britain?’
Because if it’s the first, I’m sure it’ll be fine! [I feel like that exclamation mark is doing a lot of work.]
If it’s the second, well… This is just about the worst year imaginable for household incomes in Britain. There was a lot of talk of soaring wages last year, but underlying wage growth isn’t looking great anymore. And inflation is at a 40-year high. That’s an energy and food price story in the main, together with disrupted global supply chains. But the result is a big squeeze in real pay - to which we then add tax rises. On the government’s numbers 2022 is going to see the biggest fall in real household incomes since at least the 1950s.
If consumer spending is going to hold up, then households need to increase their borrowing pretty sharply. That might happen. But it’s too early to say. Either way, make sure you accept all major credit cards.
Tom, the best way to say how bad the economy is right now is to note that I’ve been on the radio four times in the last 24 hours. Broadcast interest in me inversely tracks economic growth.
I choose to note the technical aspects of the second part of Duncan’s email, while leaning in to the exclamation mark in the first. In practice, that means I’m going to keep even more of a hawk eye on costs than I would anyway and keep staffing to an absolute minimum. I will pay myself very little indeed.
If anything, though, I think these numbers argue for more Backstory events not fewer. An evening hearing an author talk about her new book or playing a bookish quiz is, by comparison to the theatre or a restaurant, a reasonably cheap night out. There is a school of thought that spending on inexpensive treats should increase during times of hardship: we spoil ourselves with make-up, for example, since we no longer have money for foreign holidays or expensive cars. Leonard Lauder, the former Estée Lauder boss, called this the lipstick effect. The same might be true of books. Buy the latest paperback…because you’re worth it?
I’ll report back. And, in the meantime, the more bird mess the better. Particularly if the pigeon is an avid reader.
Tom
In the papers
Our digest of the books pages. All available from Backstory
Crickonomics: The Anatomy of Modern Cricket by Stefan Szymanski and Tim Wigmore. The FT says the authors “use the state of cricket today as a tool to explore much wider debates, ranging from social mobility to gender equality”: “To make cricket a game for everyone, administrators will have to think carefully and imaginatively, not just about the sport’s finances, but also its body politic — indeed its soul. This book will help.”
Good Pop, Bad Pop: An Inventory by Jarvis Cocker. “The premise of this book is that Jarvis will go through his attic deciding whether to keep or chuck the things he finds, and hopefully discover himself along the way,” says The New Statesman. “In turning out the contents of the loft, he has let the warmth back in.”
Murder Before Evensong: A Canon Clement Mystery by Reverend Richard Coles. Mixed reviews for the Rev’s first novel. Despite “good use of the cleric’s ability to move up and down the social scale with ease,” The Times reckons it is “not a great book”. The Telegraph, by contrast, thinks that “like all the best cosy mysteries, this is comforting but not anodyne.”
Promised Lands: The British and the Ottoman Middle East by Jonathan Parry. This is a major history of the British Empire's early involvement in the Middle East, from the Napoleonic Wars to the Crimean War. “Even at this distance in time, the presumption of these proconsuls takes the breath away,” says the LRB. “Parry gives lots of space to the most outrageous ones.”
The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers. This novel about mysterious crop circles that pop up on farms in the West Country in the summer of 1989 “begins portentously”, says The Guardian, but “a steady flow of banter lightens the mood”. “What’s most striking about The Perfect Golden Circle is the way it depicts time – its thickness, mysteries, continuities, the way it ebbs and flows.”
The Red Children by Maggie Gee. Maggie Gee's novel is set in Ramsgate in 2030. The temperature has risen; a new virus is killing the men. “With rich prose and a sprawling cast of characters, Gee has created a timely fable that bridges the past, present and future,” says the TLS.
Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma. “A retelling of “The Taming of the Shrew” by way of Bollywood musicals and second-generation immigrant families.” The New York Times says "there’s a lot in this novel: best friends, demanding siblings, difficult parents, aunties on the rampage.”
Rouge Street by Shuang Xuetao. Three novellas translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang. "In sparse, vernacular prose, Shuang uses fabulist noir to evoke the pace of social change,” says The New Yorker. “A hollow-boned inventor dreams of creating a flying machine; children fall into an icy lake and encounter a gigantic fish; a string of violent car-jackings dredge up submerged memories."
La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern by Lynn Garafola. This biography of Bronislava Nijinska, the Polish ballet dancer, is "an engrossing book, which gives full weight to an extraordinary life, but which also, as a subsidiary theme, questions how much Nijinska’s gender and her reluctance to play the game contributed not only to her neglect but also to the sheer, grinding relentlessness of her career," reckons The Spectator.
I Never Promised You A Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg. Originally published in 1964 under a pseudonym, Greenberg's book was a best-seller in its day and is now reissued. In The Atlantic Lauren LeBlanc says it is “a fearless coming-of-age novel about Deborah Blau, a midwestern Jewish teenage girl…I continue to take comfort in the power of Greenberg’s book—and others that I pressed into the hands of my friends as a teenager—to have said things I couldn’t say.”