Benjamin Evans - Author

Hemingway’s first novel, set in Paris and Pamplona in the 1920s, is the archetypal novel of The Lost Generation, the group of artists and authors exiled together in Europe in the aftermath of World War I. Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson. F Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein were its more famous residents and Hemingway their chief scribe. In it he depicts the listless parties and fiestas, drinking and loving and search for identity in an amoral world, where experience and enjoyment are the only pursuits worth having and direction and goals are forgotten in a society broken by war and death. Our main character is Jake, an ex soldier turned journalist who has been injured during the conflict, an injury that has left him impotent, a condition touched on in moments but never specifically discussed. This is a world where the physical damage of half a decade of violence is brushed under a carpet of bright lights and social whirl: ‘Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny.’ The lif...

Modern writing is still alive! Here is a book by a contemporary author that isn’t smart-arse, self-conscious or written for people who shop in Tescos. Unfortunately it happens to be set in the 17th Century Danish Court and be written by a novelist who’s pen is inspired by the worlds of rural Norfolk, but hey, at least its good, and for more real than the other genre fiction cluttering the shelves of Waterstones. The reason this is good is because it doesn’t read like a historical book. In a sense it doesn’t read of a book trapped in a time or a setting, because its characterisation is so good and its themes so universal. Ostensibly it is a love story between the lutenist of King Christian IV and the companion of Kirsten, the King’s estranged wife. However, this is by far the lease interesting part of the book, and one that you seem that Tremain has included to shape her historical and lyrical flourishes around. Romantic fiction this is not. Peter Claire is our lutenist, who takes resid...

A doctor answers a call from a local stately home, Hundreds Hall, where the young maid has been taken ill. However, on examination it appears there is nothing wrong with her, apart from an uneasy feeling about her new employment, in this house that ‘gives her the creeps’ in which she thinks she ‘will die of fright sometimes.’ Our rational doctor is sympathetic and prescribes some simple stomach mixture, but is taken in by the grand mansion in which he finds himself, and its occupants, the surly Roderick, his pragmatic sister Caroline and their rather glamorous mother Mrs Ayres. Soon he starts to treat the former for an war-injury to his leg. However, there appears to be something sinister happening to the family, particularly to Roderick, as he straggles with the upkeep of a stately home going to the dogs, at the same time beginning to have nightmarish visions at night. One by one these visions intensify and pass to each member of the family, with increasingly tragic results. Can our c...

‘Nick Clegg is a whore – and the Conservatives were the only party who would pay for a whore.’ It’s been a depressing few weeks for all those who believe in the principles of politics. From standing on opposite ends of the Television podium and apparently seeming to represent complete polarities in most of the political spectrum, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have somehow jumped into bed together to form a united front against the evil that was New Labour and Gordon Brown. They have formed a fellowship of previously warring factions, Cameron the would-be-king Aragorn and Clegg as his archer-in-chief Legolas, against the despotic Brown, who has been looking over them all with his great ego and his...evil eye. Okay, so the combination may not entirely work, but it is working to the right ends, to help all us back to fiscal harmony, where hard times will lead us one day into a new, brighter world. Or perhaps the ring has tempted all of them – Cameron a wide eyed hobbit and C...

A few days ago I was sat in the pub with my friends. It was the first really hot day of the year and because of this all the babes and the hunks were able to shed their winter cloaks and get their shapely, toned bodies out on display. Here was where all those hours down the gym would pay off, where they would get the return for sweating out the merest ripple of fat on their arses or hammering out those biceps until they were ready to burst. Here is where a stranger’s eyes would divert lustily towards them, affirming of all the hard work they had put in over the winter months. They were attractive! People fancied them. They had a power over the opposite sex and, more than likely, they would get a shag at the end of the night. They had succeeded in the one thing that is most important to all of us, whether we realize it or not. Over the same dark, winter months, I have been running. Six days a week, fifty-sixty miles, rain, wind or shine. Okay, so these guys or girls had been down the gy...

How wonderful it is to be a runner. How fabulous we feel breathing in the fresh air on a sunny Sunday morning, working our taught legs, expanding our capacious lungs, feeling fit and happy with the world. What pleasure we attain. How blessed we are to follow this path. This is why we do it and this is when we wonder why everyone else doesn’t do it too. Running makes you feel fantastic, who could not want to take it up right now? And yet I hardly know anyone who runs. In fact, almost no-one I know does. So why? If running is such an innate human capability and so ultimately pleasure-inducing, why doesn’t everyone do it? Why was it only me, a seventy year old man with a beard and a chubby Chinese woman with headphones who were out in the park this morning? Reason 1: Lethargy The human body operate on momentum. Left to its own devices it will happily sit on the couch doing nothing and to convince it towards physical exertion is not an easy thing to do. At first it will resemble a stubborn...

A rather wistful tale by Zadie Smith, literary wunderkind of the chattering classes, as she tells the story of Howard Belsey, an English academic, and hi African-American wife Kiki, as they deal with adult affairs, teenage romances, intellectual rivalries and most importantly, trying to forge an identity amongst the traditional, middle class milieu of Ivy league American North East. The story is predominantly concerned with the actions of Howard as the details of an affair with a fellow teacher begin to unravel around him. At the same time he has to deal with the highly strung opinions of his talented daughter Zora, as the joins his class and the class of his previous mistress, and the temptations of a stunning new student in his class, who also happens to be the daughter of his rival, the right wing moral mouthpiece Monty Kipps. This is something of an ensemble piece for Smith, a mix of clear and clever characters who interact in amusing and believable ways as the scandal erupts aroun...