SPIKE MAGAZINE

Reviewed by Robert O’Connor Frank Zappa once said “most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.” However true that might be, Paul Nelson was one who

Reviewed by Greg Houle Long relegated to history’s vast nether regions of obscurity, the twentieth president of the United States, James A. Garfield is best known for two things: he was the last of the American presidents to be born in a log cabin

Stephen Dorril’s “Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism” is an exhaustive re-examination of the man who, far from being a Hitler admiring crank, was inextricably bound up with British politics and upper class attitudes, writes

Chris Hall Burksey: The Autobiography of a Football God – Peter Morfoot See all books byPeter Morfoot at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com This has got cult classic written all over it. Burksey is the spoof autobiography of Tristan Stephen

Chris Mitchell Suicide: No Compromise – David Nobakht See all music by Suicide at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Just finished the top notch hardback edition of David Nobakht’s biography of synth-rock pioneers Suicide. I would have

Chris Mitchell The Underdog: How I Survived The World’s Most Outlandish Competitions – Joshua Davis See all books by Joshua Davis at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Joshua Davis set out to win. At anything. Living in a crappy apartment

Chris Mitchell The Search: How Google And Its Rivals Rewrote The Rules Of Business And Transformed Our Culture – John Battelle See all books by John Battelle at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com John Battelle’s The Search is more than just

Chris Mitchell Field Of Vision: The Broadcast Life Of Kenneth Allsop – Mark Andresen See all books by Mark Andresen at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Biography is often the most satisfying of all literary genres; other people’s

Kevin Walsh Billy – Pamela Stephenson See all books by Pamela Stephenson at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Pamela Stephenson faced a real challenge in the writing of this book: the viewpoint. She came to public attention as the peroxide-blonde

Stephen Mitchelmore finds Thomas Bernhard to be elusive within two studies of the Austrian writer What if everything we can be depends on playing a role? Where would that leave us? Well, first of all, it would mean that the public self, the one

Robin Askew At home with Sting. The in-no-way-narcissistic rainforest dwellers’ friend and tantric sex enthusiast is looking for a space in his sitting room to hang a giant self-portrait. Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that this will not

Budge Burgess Gilbert and Sullivan’s London – Andrew Goodman See all books by Andrew Goodman at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com When General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, complained that ‘the devil has the best

Budge Burgess Mary Shelley – Miranda Seymour See all books by Miranda Seymour at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com The story of Mary Shelley and her invention, Frankenstein, is one of the great romantic tales of literature. At 16, she

Budge Burgess The Man Behind the Myth – Richard Holland See all books by Richard Holland at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Interest in Roman history is an ironic perennial, blossoming with each Hollywood blockbuster – Quo Vadis, Ben Hur,

Even though he’s been dead for seven years, the savage political satire of Bill Hicks makes more sense than ever. Chris Hall spreads the word. If you mention to any intelligent individual under the age of 25 that you saw Nirvana and The Pixies

Chris Hall London – Peter Ackroyd See all books by Peter Ackroyd at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Those who have read Peter Ackroyd’s Dan Leno and The Limehouse Golem will recall that the word golem comes from the medieval Jewish

With the publication of her new 75 year study The German Trauma, Eugene Byrne talks to Gitta Sereny Eugene Byrne For someone who’s spent most of her adult life staring into the abyss, Gitta Sereny laughs a heck of a lot. “I love to laugh.

Stephen Mitchelmore Marcel Proust – Jean-Yves Tadie See all books by Jean-Yves Tadie at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com For a short time, I used to stay up most of the night. In the long summer months between school years

Nathan Cain The Beat Hotel – Barry Miles See all books by Barry Miles at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com 9 rue Git-le-Coeur is an address that looms large in the literary landscape of the last half of the twentieth century.

Stephen Mitchelmore explores the post-Holocaust poetry of Paul Celan “With a variable key you unlock the house in which drifts the snow of that left unspoken. Always what key you choose depends on the blood that

Stephen Harper Unknown Pleasures – Paul Stump See all books by Paul Stump at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com Yesterday, Bryan Ferry nearly killed me. Lost in the music on my car stereo, I took a sharp corner on the A7 south

Lewis Owens meets composer Arvo Pärt A few months ago, I contacted the composer Arvo Pärt through his publisher in Vienna. I informed Mr Pärt that I was interested in writing a book on his life and music. After reading my proposal, Mr Pärt

Stephen Harper The Bird That Never Flew is a crude but extraordinary autobiography. With a minimum of literary fuss, John Steele describes his unimaginably brutal life, which began in the gritty Glasgow estates of Carntyne and

Chris Mitchell Throughout his film-making career, George Lucas has continually pushed back the boundaries of technology in order to realise his ideas on the silver screen. John Baxter’s biography of the man is not

Mark Ostrowski meets Lesley Himes, widow of the late, great Chester Himes Women without men: María survived Borges; Linda Lee, Bukowski; Mary, Hemingway; and Lesley, Himes. Women who dealt with their husbands’ blindness, alcoholism, mental disorders,