Author Archive: Peter Jakobsen
Defend the Realm
Kim Philby
(by Christopher Andrew) (Other editions entitled The Defence of the Realm) The author is suited to the task of telling MI5’s story and not just because he’s a Cambridge man. Impeccably credentialed and given an exclusive entreé to classified material, Mr Andrew provides a rational, impartial and exquisitely detailed work, easy to read and to read compulsively.
Continue Reading →Death Comes for the Archbishop
(by Willa Cather) A series of disappointingly empty episodes in old New Mexico, where the priests are as mixed a bag as anywhere else.
Continue Reading →Dead Souls
(by Nikolai Gogol) Gogol was no Dante. He could not legislate in his novels. But he pinned sinners more lethally than most and the wild scheme to buy and sell the dead, today, looks a lot like dealing in derivatives. The dead souls were peasants who had passed on between official census, and hence you incurred their holding costs (tax) till they were officially designated as dead at the next census. The protagonist, Chichikov, would acquire those dead souls, thereby assuming the tax burden of them, but he would mortgage them as live souls till the next census. Priestley wrote “On…
Continue Reading →Dead Man
(dir. Jim Jarmusch) (1996) Johnny Depp rides again, or should it be sails, into the sunset, only this time, weird works. [As Depp Indian films go, this is as good as The Lone Ranger is execrable…]
Continue Reading →The Count of Monte Cristo
(by Alexandre Dumas) A turgid but absorbing boys’- own revenge yarn.
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