James Ward
Waterstones and how it caught me by surprise
About two years ago, I went to London with my wife to look at some Chinese porcelain in the British museum. There’d been a programme...
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James Ward
- May 26, 2019
- 4 min
‘Capturing life’
It is often said of the greatest novels that they ‘capture life’, and this has probably been an ambition of most major authors. The...
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James Ward
- Apr 23, 2019
- 9 min
Seven reasons to suspect War and Peace may not be the greatest novel ever written
(Warning: contains spoilers!) As far as I know, it was John Galsworthy that first explicitly called War and Peace “the greatest novel...
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James Ward
- Jun 3, 2018
- 3 min
Marxists: turn away now.
Yesterday, The Communist Manifesto arrived for me in the post, courtesy of ‘World of Books’, an accredited EBay seller. A little green...
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James Ward
- May 20, 2018
- 4 min
My sinister bookshelves
I bought my wife a year’s membership of the National Trust for Christmas. Of course, because I can’t expect her to go visiting old houses...
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James Ward
- Nov 15, 2017
- 3 min
Russian ‘interference’ in our elections. Who cares?
So finally. Yesterday, Mrs May announced that she believes Russia interferes in western politics; today, Ciaran Martin, the founding...
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James Ward
- Sep 19, 2017
- 3 min
The triumph of memoir fiction
It was Mark Twain who first said, “Write what you know”. “What you know” could include a lot of things, but Twain’s prescription is often...
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James Ward
- Sep 12, 2017
- 5 min
Slim novels
“When the book wars sweep across the galaxy, and the blood of publishers runs down the gutters of every interstellar metropolis, the...
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James Ward
- Sep 5, 2017
- 5 min
The religious story of the novel
In 2006, a community action group in Tower Hamlets launched a campaign to prevent a film production of Monica Ali’s bestselling novel,...
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James Ward
- Aug 15, 2017
- 4 min
The Man Booker Prize: where did it all go wrong?
Who won the Man Booker prize last year? Or the year before? Difficult to say. At least, without Google. Difficult to say anything much...
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James Ward
- Aug 8, 2017
- 3 min
Bond’s two greatest weaknesses, or why the franchise may need a new Roger Moore…
007 is the world’s most successful film franchise. Fifty years and counting, and doubly unique in being directly descended from its...
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James Ward
- Aug 2, 2017
- 2 min
Strange reading 1: Sulla and the satyr
Every now and then, you come across something in literature that makes you stop and wonder. If it’s a ‘classic’ you’re reading, often...
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James Ward
- Jul 25, 2017
- 2 min
Child and Reacher and a guy called Raymond
It ought to be possible to find lots of Lee Child novels at car boot sales and charity shops. After all, he has millions of fans. (For...
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James Ward
- Jul 8, 2016
- 3 min
The Malign Pyramid of Derivation: From John Le Carre and Len Deighton to James Ward
Lately, I’ve been trying to work out a way of advertising my books on Facebook. I’m not naturally a very sociable sort of person. Don’t...
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James Ward
- Oct 12, 2014
- 3 min
When Does a Very Good Novel Become “Great”?
Private Eye’s “Bookworm” described Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel, Freedom, as too domestic to be great. Or words to that effect. I didn’t...
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James Ward
- Sep 6, 2014
- 3 min
Measurable versus Unmeasurable
Some readers may be familiar with a US website called The Art of Manliness, devoted to all things gentlemanly. A couple of years ago, two...
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