War with Honour (1940) by AA Milne

Alan Milne rather resented being known only as the author of Winnie-the-Pooh. As he often liked to point out, he had also written plays, novels and non-fiction. Among his works in the latter category was Peace with Honour (1934), which called on Britain to avoid war with Germany at all costs (Milne had first-hand experience of World War I, having served in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment as a signals officer and seen action on the Somme, so perhaps this was understandable). But War with Honour was his thoroughgoing retraction of Peace with Honour. Piglet had spoken; now it was Eeyore’s turn. ‘If anybody reads Peace with Honour now,’ Milne wrote, ‘he must read it with that one word HITLER scrawled across every page….I accept the facts, and I accept this war. For German Peace means all that Modern War means - and worse. It means not only the torturing to death of bodies but the poisoning to death of souls…And the ultimate truth which will always be sacred is that the soul is more important than the body.’

The Big Green Book (1962) by Robert Graves

The Big Green Book, a children’s story illustrated by Maurice Sendak (before he achieved fame with Where the Wild Things Are), contains some familiar Gravesian themes. Jack, an orphan, finds a big green book of magic in the attic and uses it to transform himself into a druidic-looking little old man with a knee-length beard. He then begins to torment his elders. To his uncle, he says: ‘You see these three peas? Put them in a row in the middle of your hand, and see if you can blow away the middle one without blowing away the outside ones.’ The uncle tries, but can’t. Then Jack covers up the two outside ones with his fingers and blows the central one away. ‘Oh, that isn’t magic!’ exclaims the uncle, but when he tries to do it himself, his fingernails grow so long that they pierce the palm of his hand and he screams in agony. Jack laughs uproariously. If this episode rings any bells, an identical scene is enacted in Claudius the God, between Claudius and a very Jack-like British druid.

Oriri (1940) by Marie Stopes

Marie Stopes, the birth control campaigner and author of Married Love, was notoriously plain-speaking ('Never put in your vagina anything that you would not put in your mouth', she told the bemused, mainly male readers of The Lancet in 1938). Her sexual frankness was an essential part of her campaigning success - but it had its origins in a notably idealized view of sex, as the supreme spiritual experience, imbued with ‘holiness and divine beauty’. Nowhere is this idealism more apparent than in her unsuccessful career as a Great Poet. Oriri, one of her several volumes of ecstatically undistinguished verse, is a single long poem dealing with the explosive sexual union of a 'He' and a 'She' who have met in different incarnations over the aeons. The rhymes drop like bricks, the scansion is at times reminiscent of McGonagall, but the sense of erotic energy is overwhelming. Stopes, undoubtedly the 'She' of the poem, is a woman exulting in love - and was, incidentally, at the time of its publication, one month short of her 60th birthday.

The Recipe Book of the Mustard Club (1926) by Dorothy L Sayers

And he replied: ‘The flames unquenchable
That fire them from within thus make them burn
Ruddy, as thou seest, in this, the Nether Hell.’

It is unlikely that when Dorothy L Sayers produced those lines she was thinking of mustard: unlikely, but not impossible. The distinguished translator of Dante (and creator of Lord Peter Wimsey) was, in her early career, a copy-writer for Benson’s, an advertising agency whose most important client was Colman’s of Norwich. While there she wrote, among several other mustard-related items, the Recipe Book of the Mustard Club. The club was at first fictional, featuring characters such as the Baron de Beef and the club secretary Miss Di Gester, but became so popular that real memberships were issued, and during its pre-war heyday stood at half a million. Sayers littered the text with quotations from Shakespeare and other classical authors (though not Dante), adding next to a recipe for Devilled Beef: ‘Who sups on a devil should have Mustard in his spoon’.

Trilogy (1978) by Leonid Brezhnev

Leonid Brezhnev produced the standard documents for a Soviet leader: speeches, articles and Leninophiliac tracts. In 1978 he added three books of jaunty memoirs: Little Land, Rebirth and The Virgin Lands. These related his part in the Great Patriotic War and its immediate aftermath, and abound in scenes in which he single-handedly repels Nazi attacks or leads the way through mined potato-fields. Considering he spent the war as a political commissar rather than a military officer, these were not regarded by everyone as exhibiting the completest veracity. Little Land in particular is notable for a photo of Brezhnev relaxing with fellow-soldiers which has been doctored so obviously that several of the men’s heads look like they have been re-drawn by Terry Gilliam. Brezhnev nevertheless received the Lenin Prize for Literature for his efforts. Many Russians believed the achievement was all the more remarkable for someone who was under 24-hour sedation. As the joke went: somebody knocks at the door of Brezhnev's office. Brezhnev fumbles in his jacket pocket, takes out a piece of paper and reads: ‘Who's there?’

Lecherous Limericks (1975) by Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov’s ambition was to have a book in every one of the major Dewey Decimal categories. This one fits in the category labelled ‘dirty poems’. It’s a collection of 100 original limericks dealing with what Asimov called ‘actions and words concerning which society pretends nonexistence - reproduction, excretion, and so on.’ They are accompanied by prim exegeses on metrical structure and rhyme-scheme, which at least have the virtue of making the book a lot longer than it would otherwise have been. Perhaps surprisingly, given the possibilities of ‘young women from Venus’ and ‘old men from Uranus’, none of the limericks have extraterrestrial themes. Neither are they particularly good as dirty limericks go; their value is partly historical, since it’s unlikely that anyone now could write on the theme of rape in precisely the sunny way they did 30 years ago:

Annabelle turned beet-red in the face
At having been raped. Such disgrace!
Yet although it was terrible
It was not quite unbearable.
She had taken her pill just in case.

The Devil’s Own Song and Other Verses (1968) by Quintin Hogg

Quintin Hogg was of course Lord Hailsham, of Woolsack fame. The genesis of this collection, his only book of poetry, he explained as follows: ‘Quite suddenly, during the summer of 1940, my personal and emotional situation was such that I felt an irresistible urge to write short lyrics…Somewhere about 1963, whatever little rill of inspiration I had, dried up.’ To say that this was a Good Thing seems a little unfair, but the rill of inspiration often seems more like a dribble:

The gift returns not to the giver
Nor the spoken word to the tongue
Nor upward flows the river
Nor yet may the old be young.

The title poem is written from the point of view of the Devil, speaking to Jesus on the cross. Presumably by making this the title of the collection, Hogg also wished to suggest that he, Hogg, was a bit of a devil himself.

The Normal and Adventitious Danger Periods for Pulmonary Disease in Children (1913) by William Carlos Williams

The great American modernist poet William Carlos Williams was also a full-time paediatrician. He received his MD in 1906 and practised continuously until 1951. The rare booklet above is among his small corpus of medical writings, appearing originally in The Archives of Pediatrics in August 1913. In it he explores the possibility of a ‘danger period’ for children just before puberty, when greater growth in height in relation to chest capacity makes them more vulnerable to pulmonary disease. As he puts it, ‘The height always increases, relatively, at the expense of the chest...Developmentally, length of body is always dominant to weight.’ Interesting, given the form of his best-known poem, The Red Wheelbarrow (1925):

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

The Exploits of Mr Saucy Squirrel (1976) by Woodrow Wyatt

Lord Wyatt of Weeford, Chairman of the Tote, the ‘Voice of Reason’, and the only member of the British peerage whose cigars could remain alight underwater, says in the preface to this tale: ‘Mr Saucy Squirrel has an alert and enquiring mind. That is how he discovered a hoard of gold sovereigns though he did not know what they were at the time. His curiosity prompts him to live in the style of a human being and to find out what goes on in the world. His belief that everybody is entitled to have a good time provided that they don’t hurt other people encourages him to set about having a good time himself.’ The story was written for Petronella Wyatt when she was seven. Among other things it contains a great deal of information about the correct way to keep port, but, probably in deference to young Petronella’s lungs, nothing about cigars.

James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution (1946) by George Orwell

Managerial revolution? What next? The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Polemicists? Luckily no. This is the cover of a rare pamphlet by Orwell on the American political theorist James Burnham, who in 1940 wrote a book entitled The Managerial Revolution. In it Burnham speculated that the heirs to the world’s great capitalist, communist and fascist power-blocs would be a new breed of political ‘managers’ - that is, unelected oligarchs whose only raison d’ être would be to stay in power. Orwell’s pamphlet argues against this idea: ‘Fortunately the “managers” are not so invincible as Burnham believes,’ he says. ‘The huge, invincible, everlasting slave empire of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established.’ It is curious, then, that in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Orwell takes a notably Burnhamesque position, imagining just such a world, in which rival slave-states are locked in perpetual phoney war. Either Orwell had changed his mind in the two years to 1948, or Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sophisticated tongue-in-cheek thriller, not so much political prophecy as political satire - on Burnham.

Answers to Cancer (1962) by William Gaddis

The William Gaddis canon is limited to five novels (The Recognitions, J.R., Carpenter’s Gothic, A Frolic of his Own and Agapé Agape), now recognized to be among the most distinguished in American literature. His career got off to a bad start. His first novel The Recognitions (1955) was either ignored or dismissed as sub-Joycean stuff (Gaddis commented: ‘I recall a most ingenious piece in a Wisconsin quarterly some years ago in which The Recognitions’ debt to Ulysses was established in such minute detail I was doubtful of my own firm recollection of never having read Ulysses.’) So he took up public relations work for twenty years, working for Pfizer, Eastman Kodak, IBM and the US Army, producing classics such as A Pile Fabric Primer, TV for Today’s Education, and the pamphlet Answers to Cancer. What were the answers in the 1960s? If you’ve got a lump, tell your doctor and he’ll cut bits off you, irradiate you or give you chemo. Gaddis himself died of prostate cancer in 1998.

Cry Shame! (1950) by Katherine Everard

Cry Shame! is the torrid tale of a 13-year old girl who runs off to become a dancer: in her brief career she learns things she is too young to know, runs off with a man four times her age, assiduously breaks the seventh commandment, has an affair with an ‘ambisextrous’ Hollywood screen idol and ends her harlot’s progress in a seedy hotel room with sleeping pills and bourbon. ‘Definitely adult reading!’ bawled the Cincinnati Enquirer. ‘Frank and revealing!’ ululated the Dayton Daily News. What no-one knew at the time was that Katherine Everard was a fresh-faced young man called Gore Vidal. Short of cash and facing an unofficial blacklist from the press after publishing The City and the Pillar, Vidal wrote five pulp novels between 1950 and 1954, all of which sold well. Katherine’s surname came from ‘The Everard’, a gay bathhouse in New York. The story goes that Miss Everard was once invited, through her publishers, to speak at a women’s literary society - but instructed them to reply that she was too busy with other engagements.

Zabiba and the King (2000) by Saddam Hussein

The first of several novels by the world’s best-selling war-criminal, Zabiba and the King is a clunking allegory in which the king represents Saddam, Zabiba (a beautiful maiden) represents the Iraqi people, and Zabiba’s abusive husband represents the USA. Most of the book is presented in the form of a dialogue on statecraft between Zabiba and the king, who loves her madly (as Saddam loves his people), though he never has relations with her (that might be going a little too far). One of Zabiba’s musings, which may refer to Russia (the bear), reads as follows: ‘Even an animal respects a man’s desire, if it wants to copulate with him. Doesn’t a female bear try to please a herdsman when she drags him into the mountains as it happens in the North of Iraq? She drags him into her den, so that he, obeying her desire, would copulate with her. [...] Doesn’t she climb into the houses of farmers in order to steal some cheese, nuts, and even raisins, so that she can feed the man and awake in him the desire to have her?’

The Passing Show (1937) by Captain WE Johns

The story behind this one-off by the author of the ‘Biggles’ books is probably best told by the editor of My Garden magazine in 1937, Theo A Stephens: ‘The offices of My Garden were next door to those of Popular Flying, of which paper Captain Johns was, and still is, the editor...I asked Captain Johns whether he had ever written about any of his gardening experiences. He replied that he had not, but was so tired of writing articles and books on flying that it would be a relief and recreation to write on gardening. Commencing with a number of disconnected articles he, early this year, started a regular monthly feature under the title of ‘The Passing Show’, which feature has proved so popular that I decided it was worthy of more permanent presentation.’ The result is a readable, witty book with charming illustrations by Howard Leigh. Only occasionally does the author of Biggles reveal himself, as when he writes on p.38: ‘CASUALTY LIST: Seriously injured. Several kabschia saxifrages. Sick. Heeria elegans. Missing, believed killed. Rhodohypoxis platypetala.’

The Trailor Murder Mystery (1846) by Abraham Lincoln

In 1841 the young Abraham Lincoln was working as an attorney in Illinois . He became the defence counsel for three brothers named Trailor, who were accused of murdering an odd-job man for his money. No corpse had been found: the odd-job man had simply disappeared, and the brothers seemed suddenly wealthy, which was enough for the good folk of Springfield, IL . Then the odd-job man turned up alive and the case collapsed. Lincoln, unpaid for his services, tried to recoup something by writing an account of the affair for the newspaper The Quincy Whig, which splashed it as ‘A Remarkable Case of Arrest for Murder’ on April 15, 1846 . It was later reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine of March 1952 under the title ‘The Trailor Murder Mystery’. Lincoln was a great admirer of Poe and the proto-detective fiction of the 1840s, but his tale is flat and ends sheepishly when nothing happens and everyone goes home. If he hadn’t become President and fought a war to end slavery, it’s doubtful whether Ellery Queen would have touched it with a bargepole.

187 Men to Avoid (1995) by Danielle Brown

Danielle Brown...Danielle Brown...isn’t there something familiar about this name? Hold on. If you...remove the ‘ielle’...it’s... No.

Yes.

187 Men to Avoid was written by the author of the Da Vinci Code in 1995, before he was famous and rich. Described on the back cover as ‘A survival guide for the romantically-frustrated woman’, this first edition (above) is now highly collectable (it was later reprinted with a slightly different cover announcing: ‘by the author of the Da Vinci Code!’, which is worth nothing). The text of the book simply lists, in very large print, and with no further comment, the ‘men to avoid’: ‘Men who think yeast infections cause mouldy bread...men who don’t separate their white and coloured laundry...men who work at carnivals...men who sleep in their clothes...men who read their horoscope...men with wind-chimes...men who own hamsters... men who know more than 10 slang words for breasts [that’s Jonathon Green out then]...men who cut their own hair...men who collect comic books...men who wear clip-on ties...’

Why 187? Well, Brown is a bit of a numerologist, and 187’s only factors are two primes, 17 and 11. At least that’s my theory.

Santa’s Twin (1996) by Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is the author of the schlock-horror novel Demon Seed (later a film) about a woman who is raped by a computer. Further offerings include Watchers , Lightning, The Bad Place, Intensity, Fear Nothing, and False Memory. His talents, however, don’t end there. His publishers explain:

‘At the request of his fans, bestselling novelist Dean Koontz has created a contemporary masterpiece that is destined to take its place alongside ‘The Night before Christmas’ and A Christmas Carol as a perennial Yuletide favourite. Santa’s Twin is the hilarious and heartwarming story of two little girls, Charlotte and Emily, who set out to save Santa from his mischievous twin — Bob Claus — who has not only stolen Santa’s sleigh, but has stuffed his toy bag with mud pies, cat poop and broccoli! Plus, he’s threatening to turn Donner, Blitzen and the rest into reindeer soup! And look at the mess he’s leaving under the tree!’

Oh wait, I have terrible news.
Hope it won’t give you the Christmas blues.
Santa was mugged, tied up and gagged,
Blindfolded, ear-stoppled and bagged,
Locked in his cellar under the Pole,
Down in a dismal, deep, dark, dank hole.
His sleigh is waiting out in the yard,
And someone has stolen Santa’s bank card.
Soon his accounts will be picked clean
By the use of automatic-teller machines.

Please keep this man away from my children.

Jimmy Stewart and His Poems (1989) by Jimmy Stewart

The most intriguing thing about this book is its title. Ernest Hemingway and His Novel by Ernest Hemingway would not work. Katherine Mansfield and Her Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield wouldn’t either. Poems by Jimmy Stewart would be ridiculous, as if he were pretending to be Auden. But Jimmy Stewart and His Poems by Jimmy Stewart is perfect, managing to suggest that Jimmy Stewart realizes that writing poetry is a highly eccentric activity, but that he knows he’s a bit of an oddball in a loveable, self-effacing, gangling sort of a way, and so he thought he’d have a stab at it. Remarkably, this volume contains only four poems, each with around thirty lines, which carries gangling self-effacement almost to the level of genius. The best one is probably the shortest, ‘The Top Step in the Hotel in Junín’, about a flight of stairs that always ‘trips you right on your ass’:

Of all the degrading, inhuman, mean things,
That I in my life have yet seen,
The gross, most despicable one of them all
Is the top step in the hotel in Junín.

The Horror Horn (1974) by EF Benson

‘Are you ready for the ultimate in sheer horror?’ asks the back cover of this 1970s paperback. ‘Here are stories from the darker reaches of the mind, stories which will cling like mould in your memory because there is something horribly real and convincing about them.’ Well, of course there is. They were written by the author of the Mapp and Lucia books, who always aimed to be horribly real and convincing. EF Benson was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a prolific author who, in between writing his classic high-camp stories of life in Tilling, knocked out a few ghost tales which were re-packaged for the 1970s. The title story concerns a female yeti who pursues the quivering hero down a mountainside with the specific intention of catching and ‘mating‘ with him. ‘She was enveloped in a thick growth of hair grey and tufted, and from her head it streamed down over her shoulders and her bosom, from which hung withered and pendulous breasts...A fathomless bestiality modelled the slavering mouth and narrow eyes...’ And I must draw a veil over what happens next.

My Love Affair with Miami Beach (1991) by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Isaac Bashevis Singer, the 1978 Nobel laureate, wrote mainly on the Jewish experience in pre-war Poland, the Holocaust, Israel, and the diaspora to the USA, particularly New York. Not an awful lot about Miami Beach. But Miami Beach nevertheless held a special place in his heart: it was his home for much of the latter part of his life, and was the hub of a unique population of elderly Jews in flight from the rigours of the Northern US climate. My Love Affair with Miami Beach, for which Singer provided the text, is a photographic tribute to this suburb, with its art deco hotels, nursing homes, barber shops, Judaica stores and synagogues. As Singer puts it: ‘It was remarkable: Jewishness had survived every atrocity of Hitler and his Nazis against the Jews...What I learned is that that many people from the shtetlach [small villages], which I knew so well, came here, and some of them continued their love affairs...And I could see that what I wrote in my stories about the shtetlach happened right here.’

A Time Before Genesis (1986) by Les Dawson

The rare book shown on the left (try getting hold of a copy) is Dawson’s only serious work of fiction. It provides a disturbing insight into the mind of the late comedian. Its thesis is that the earth has, for millennia, been controlled by alien forces who have had a hand in everything from the Maya to the Miners’ Strike; in its magisterial sweep the book takes in the Spanish Inquisition, the rise of Hitler, the Kennedy assassination, Glastonbury, the Second Coming, cigarettes stubbed out on the eyeballs (twice), various scenes of sexual mutilation, the projected collapse of the EEC in 1989 and the Sino-Russian war of 1992. The following excerpt gives an idea of the inflated tone, which despite its resemblance to bits of Dawson’s stage act is, I must repeat, not meant to be funny: ‘Before the Beginning, there was an emptiness, an abyss of space, an infinite void where only the darkness seemed tangible. Then came the Light and the orbiting giants filled the vacuum. The vast balls began to cool...’