Malcolm Forbes is a literary critic and essayist whose work has appeared in numerous publications. He contributed book and cultural reviews to The Weekly Standard between 2014 and 2018, covering subjects ranging from classic authors like Jane Austen and Jonathan Swift to film and contemporary literature.
In 2003, when J. M. Coetzee was announced the recipient of that year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, the news wasn’t met with outraged cries of “Who?” or “Why?” With nine brilliant novels under his belt, along with a haul of prestigious literary awards—including a hitherto unprecedented two Booker…
In December 1943, Winston Churchill contracted pneumonia on a visit to North Africa and found himself banned from work and laid up in bed. While convalescing, he asked his daughter Sarah to read him Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It proved just the tonic. “What calm lives they had, those…
In Umberto Eco’s medieval whodunit The Name of the Rose, the narrator, a Benedictine novice, comes to realize that “books speak of books: it is as if they spoke among themselves.” Armed with this newfound awareness, he sees the monastery library in another light—not as a quiet, cloistered retreat…
In December 1943, Winston Churchill contracted pneumonia on a visit to North Africa and found himself banned from work and laid up in bed. While convalescing, he asked his daughter Sarah to read him Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It proved just the tonic. “What calm lives they had, those…
This is the bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte Brontë, and to celebrate it comes a biography by the British writer Claire Harman. Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart isn't the first literary life she has penned: Her biographies of Fanny Burney and Robert Louis Stevenson appeared to critical acclaim…
Jonathan Swift was a man of contradictions. He was born in Ireland yet was embarrassed by the fact and maintained that he was English. As a clergyman he held in contempt anyone who threatened the dogma and sanctity of his church, but as one of the sharpest satirists of his day he railed against…
Antiquities, said Francis Bacon, are “remnants of History, which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time." The 17th-century English biographer and antiquarian John Aubrey was born in the year Bacon died, read his Essays as a child, and included him in his who's-who compendium of famous greats,…
'The history of the Reformation is very largely a history of books and publication," writes Marilynne Robinson in an essay on the schism within Western Christianity and one of the great seismic movements of the last millennium. On the eve of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation comes this…
In 2012, The Columnist, a play based on the life of Joseph Alsop, opened on Broadway. In their reviews, critics felt compelled to explain to readers who the main character was. One described him as “a once-feared political pundit,” another as “the most powerful journalist that everyone’s…
In November 1953, while shooting On the Waterfront, Elia Kazan wrote a tetchy letter to producer Sam Spiegel in which he grouched about creative differences and hard practicalities such as budget and schedule. “Every once in a while you may get a letter from me,” runs his pre-salvo lead-in. “Its…