Gilead Cooper QC recommends
This month, as our first guest, we asked Gilead Cooper QC of Wilberforce Chambers to share his book recommendations with us. Gilead was called to the bar in 1983. Prior to this, he enjoyed a brief career in publishing, editing books on photography, popular science and astronomy. Described in the Legal 500 as having “an incredibly quick mind, great intellectual powers, and at the same time a wonderful capacity for creative, strategic thinking”, we were intrigued to discover which six books Gilead would recommend…
“I think I am reconciled to the likelihood (I originally wrote “fact”, but let’s not give up) that I am never going to be invited as a guest on Desert Island Discs. So this is the next best thing. There is no connecting theme here, other than that these are all books I love and wish to share.”
Decline and Fall
Evelyn Waugh
Waugh’s spectacularly brilliant debut novel is one of the funniest books ever written. It opens with the unfortunate Paul Pennyfeather (a rather earnest theology student) being sent down from his Oxford college for indecency after being de-bagged by the drunken and riotous Bollinger Club (“Oh please God,” prays the Junior Dean in the hope of the Club being fined copious bottles of college port, “Make them attack the Chapel!”). Paul gets a job as a teacher at a Welsh prep school, and things go downhill from there.
1066 and All That
Sellar and Yeatman
Another laugh-out-loud book. As the authors explain in the “Compulsory Preface”, “History is not what you thought. It is what you can remember.” If your recollection of school history is slightly hazy, this is guaranteed to scramble it completely. It includes a number of Test Papers, to make sure you have been paying attention (eg., “What is a Plantagenet? Do you agree?”; “Estimate the size of (1) Little Arthur (2) Friar Puck (3) Magna Carta”; “Which do you consider was the stronger swimmer, (a) The Spanish Armadillo, (b) The Great Seal?”) It should be compulsory reading for everybody.
One On One
Craig Brown
An ingenious schema, brilliantly executed: each of a series of short chapters (each 1001 words long) describes a true encounter between two historic figures from the twentieth century, connecting writers, politicians, movie-stars, and royalty, in an improbable daisy-chain of surprising anecdotes. So, for example, Marilyn Monroe meets Nikita Khrushchev meets George Brown meets Eli Wallach meets Frank Sinatra, and so on. Starting with Adolf Hitler nearly being run over by a car in Munich in 1931, within four jumps we find Mark Twain meeting Helen Keller, eventually ending up, after 101 meetings, back with Hitler.
How many steps do you think it takes to get from Elvis Presley to Groucho Marx (via Rasputin)?
The Matter with Things
Iain McGilchrist
This is the book I am reading at the moment. McGilchrist is a polymath, and this book is impossible to categorise. It is really about everything. McGilchrist’s starting-point is based on his studies as a psychiatrist and neuroscience researcher (he is modestly described on the dustjacket as a philosopher and literary scholar as well), and follows on from his 2009 book, The Master and his Emissary. It analyses the different ways in which the left and right hemispheres of the brain perceive and interpret the world. McGilchrist’s underlying thesis is that the unreliable and literal-minded left hemisphere has been allowed into the driving-seat, when it should only be a navigational aid: it is the right hemisphere that sees the whole picture and should be left to make the important decisions. Civilisation, McGilchrist believes, is endangered as a result. Highly readable, erudite, and utterly fascinating.
The Iliad
Homer
I realise I risk ending up in the Pseuds’ Corner of MTG’s website by including this on my list – but it’s not as if I’m insisting that you read it in Greek. The Iliad is not just the beginning of Western literature, it is also the best. “Every notion of progress is refuted by the existence of the Iliad,” wrote Roberto Calasso. If you need more persuading, you might try Adam Nicolson’s wonderful study, “The Mighty Dead: Why Homer Matters”, by way of a taster.
A la recherche du temps perdu
Proust
Having jumped the shark by recommending Homer, I feel I have nothing to lose by doubling down with Proust for my final choice. The first 150 pages or so represent something of an entrance barrier (Rupert Ticehurst – I suggest you skip and perhaps go back later), but what nobody tells you about it is that is both very funny and very sexy, with a cast of unforgettable characters and memorable incidents: Madame Verdurin (nastier than Lady Macbeth), Charles Swann (based in part on Charles Ephrussi, if you have read Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes), Elstir, the Duchesse de Guermantes, Charlus, Françoise, Albertine, Bloch… I could go on.
If you aren’t tempted, or don’t have the stamina, there is an excellent abridged version in “bande dessinée” (that’s graphic novel or comic-book to us), but unfortunately it has so far only reached the end of volume 2.