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Gilbert & George and the Communists by James Birch
In 1988, Gilbert and George – provocateurs, living sculptures, two-in-one artists – told the Soho gallerist James Birch that they wanted to stage an exhibition in communist Moscow: “Art for all” was their supposed creed. Birch was about to take a Francis Bacon show to the Soviet Union and they knew him already from the Blitz nightclub. So started a curious series of events, deftly narrated here as an account of the last days of the USSR cast as a comedy of manners. Helping Birch’s recollections on to the page is the journalist Michael Hodges, who endows them with breezy vivacity and a sotto voce sense of the absurd.
The exhibition took place in 1990, with Gorbachev in charge of a changed country but still with more than enough strangeness about to enliven the narrative – secret servicemen in the hotel, a KGB fixer who half threatens to torture Birch with “heated-up nails to put through your fingers”, British Council men in suits, and an assortment of interested parties – as well as G&G, of course, studiedly enigmatic throughout. The show itself attracted 400,000 curious Muscovites just before Boris Yeltsin banned the Communist Party.
By Michael Prodger
Cheerio Publishing, 208pp, £19.99. Buy the book
Ninette’s War: A Jewish Story of Survival in 1940s France by John Jay
Ninette Dreyfus was a scion of one of France’s most distinguished families: her banker father, Edgar, financed the country’s armies in the First World War, her mother was an heiress, and her childhood home once belonged to Claude Debussy. Though members of the haute juiverie, such esteem couldn’t shield the family from the anti-Semitism of the Vichy and Nazi regimes.
Ninette’s War is John Jay’s meticulously researched novel that synthesises the diary Ninette kept throughout the war with historical accounts, biographies and conversations the two had before her death in 2021. It is as much an evocative articulation of the horrors of the Holocaust – including tales of life in the Drancy internment camp, which had the moniker “the antechamber of Auschwitz” – as it is a reckoning of France’s regime under Philippe Pétain.
By situating Ninette’s remarkable story within the broader historical and social context, Jay is able to offer a unique text with an inimitable richness, depth and, at times, levity (such as at Ninette’s first Yom Kippur, where she donned a Hermès scarf whose motifs included a ham).
By Zoë Huxford
Profile, 352pp, £20. Buy the book
Iran’s Rise and Rivalry with the US in the Middle East by Mohsen M Milani
The seismic events in the Middle East over the past 15 months – from the 7 October attacks on Israel to the subsequent wars in Gaza and Lebanon – have all been heavily influenced by the actions of one country: Iran. But how did Iran, once a monarchy that was friendly with the US, evolve into a theocratic regime on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power with vast influence over the Middle East?
To answer this question Mohsen M Milani traces the rapid shift in Iran’s foreign policy since the 1979 revolution, focusing on the country’s cold war with the US. The anti-American strategy has been bolstered by Tehran’s web of support for regional non-state actors, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as its influence in Iraq and Syria. Yet the speed with which events in the region are now unfolding – Milani’s book clearly went to press before the December collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, which Iran supported – suggests that regional influence can erode in an instant. Indeed, if Iran’s rise as a formidable power was rapid, the collapse of its foreign policy strategy could take even less time.
By Megan Gibson
Oneworld Publications, 368pp, £25. Buy the book
Captain de Havilland’s Moth by Alexander Norman
In the early 1920s, Geoffrey de Havilland decided to do for aircraft what Henry Ford had done for motor cars with his Model T. His career as a designer-flier had seen him set the British altitude record of 10,500 feet in one of his own planes in 1912 and come up with numerous planes used by the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. The machine that really made his name, however, was the DH60 Moth which first took to the air in February 1925.
This centenary is marked by Alexander Norman’s thoroughly compelling history. The arrival of the plywood and canvas biplane with folding wings, meaning it could be stored in small spaces (one well-heeled aficionado kept his in his stables), fired a craze for aero clubs and recreational flying. The Prince of Wales bought one and so society followed; Amy Johnson from Hull flew to Australia in one; and Mary Bailey (who took De Havilland’s altitude record in one of his DH60s) used one to fly from Croydon to Cape Town and back; while Francis Chichester flew one before a crash in Japan converted him to sailing. Norman’s book delivers scrapes and soarings in equal, diverting, measure.
By Michael Prodger
Abacus, 336pp, £25. Buy the book
[See also: The moderate voices of the English Civil War]
This article appears in the 29 Jan 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Class War