History in the House: Some Remarkable Dons and the Teaching of Politics, Character and Statecraft
Richard Davenport-Hines
William Collins, £26, pp426
Christ Church college, Oxford – known as “the House” – is inextricably linked with power in Britain, having educated 13 prime ministers and countless cabinet ministers, to say nothing of innumerable machiavellian figures lurking in the shadows. Some of these, of course, were the history academics and tutors – the dons – who mentored the future politicians. In his highly informed new study, Richard Davenport-Hines illuminatingly explores the links between privilege and patronage with wit and authority, bringing contradictory characters such as the historians Hugh Trevor-Roper and Arthur Hassall to life in fascinating detail.
Rabbits
Hugo Rifkind
Birlinn, £14.99, pp352
Hot on the heels of Saltburn and Jonny Sweet’s The Kellerby Code, Hugo Rifkind’s entertaining new novel offers another jaded look at the antics of the posh. His thoroughly middle-class protagonist, Tommo, finds himself sent to a grim, Gordonstoun-esque boarding school, where his peers are all wealthier and more socially comfortable than he is, even if their breeding barely conceals a capacity for violence and chaos. Rifkind keeps the outrageous laughs and twists coming in equal measure.
Summer in Baden-Baden
Leonid Tsypkin
Faber, £9.99, pp240 (paperback)
The writer Leonid Tsypkin, born in Soviet-era Belarus, has never had the reception that his work has deserved in the west, but this reissue of his most famous novel, garlanded with praise by none other than Susan Sontag, should redress that. Sensitively and intelligently translated by Roger and Angela Keys, Tsypkin’s fictionalised account of Dostoevsky’s stay in Germany in 1867 is shot through with avant garde wit and poetic imagination. It daringly conflates incidents from Dostoevsky’s life and fiction into the narrative, turning it into a kaleidoscopic reverie, and remains addictively readable.
• To order History in the House, Rabbits or Summer in Baden-Baden go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
