Alba Arikha will be speaking to David Goodhart about Major/Minor at Daunt Books, Hampstead on Thursday 12th October. You can read more about this event here and reserve a place. To get a copy of Major/Minor, now in paperback, is available here.
Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? is featured in the Times diary on three different occasions! Here are the three stories... 'De Silva’s book has lots of good anecdotes, such as the one about a dinner thrown by the chief of the general staff, after which the US ambassador lit up a large Cuban cigar. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, foreign secretary at the time, gently observed that America had long had sanctions against such things, to which the ambassador replied: “Yes, I am helping to burn the enemy’s crops.” The Times Diary, 30th September 'Sir Desmond de Silva, QC, who has just published his memoirs, shared a chambers early in his career with Learie Constantine, the former West Indies Test cricketer and later Britain's first black peer. Constantine, right, had three trays for correspondence on his desk, marked "In" "Out" and "LBW." De Silva asked what the last stood for. "Let the buggers wait," Constantine replied. It reminds me of a story about Nicholas Ridley, the former minister, who said that happiness was an empty in-tray, an empty out-tray and a full ashtray.' The Times Diary, 3rd October 'Justice can be blind literally as well as metaphorically. Desmond de Silva, QC, writes in his new book about a fearsome magistrate who had a glass eye so perfectly made it was impossible to tell it from the real one. A young barrister eventually whispered to his senior for a hint about how to tell which was fake. "It's the one with the little bit of humanity in it, dear boy," came the reply.' The Times Diary, 4th October
The Evening Standard is very excited about the publication of Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? by Desmond de Silva. Read the full piece here. As are we! It's out today and available here.
The Daily Mail reports on Alexander Newley's painting which was stolen from art collector Ivan Massow last summer and later sold in a car boot sale in The Isle of Sheppey in Kent. You can read the article here. We will be publishing Unaccompanied Minor by Alexander Newley in December.
‘For all those even vaguely interested in the British empire and colonies in the years after 1939 this sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, always buoyant autobiography is compulsory reading.’
Christopher Ondaatje reviews Madam, Where Are Your Mangoes? by Desmond de Silva for The Spectator. You can read the full review here. Madam, Where Are Your
Julia Sutton has published a brilliant review of Mother of Darkness by Venetia Welby which you can read here and get your copy of the book here today.
As you can see here, Outsider and Outsider II by Brian Sewell are sitting on John Le Carré's bookshelf... Make sure your bookshelf looks the same and get your volumes of Brian Sewell's 'remarkable memoir' (Craig Brown) here today.
We were very sad to hear about the death of Quartet author Bernie Katz and our thoughts are with his friends and family at this tragic time. We were delighted to publish Soho Society in 2008 will greatly miss this remarkable author.