Andy Beckett's Top Book Recommendations

Andy BeckettI’m very interested in Los Angeles, my favourite city apart from London. I’ve been there many times and find it fascinating that it was the fashionable urban prototype of the late 60s. Banham’s book epitomises that and helped create the idea. It’s about the new consumerism and whether it can be accommodated within a society that is still relatively just. He’s not a Thatcherite. He may like people... (Source)

Andy BeckettWhat Cockett spots, which very few other writers on the 70s spot, is that the roots of what happened on the political right went back a long way. The neo-liberal counter-revolution, and a pro-market anti-trade union attitude, built up from the end of World War Two, if not earlier. You could argue that the counter-revolution happened before the revolution itself. That it developed through the 50s... (Source)

Andy BeckettI think The History Man is actually quite detailed social history. It’s meant to be about the early 70s. But it was published in the mid-70s and perhaps its picture of the early part of the decade is too dominated by concerns with the political left. I think the left’s real hold on the universities wasn’t really established until later in the 70s. It probably reached a peak in the early to... (Source)

Andy BeckettEveryone associates him with the 80s and sees him as an apologist for its excesses. But that’s not quite right. He started writing for GQ in the early 70s, which was when he made his name. What you get from Style Wars is the sense that the 70s was great fun for many people, especially in London. That was quite a surprise when I first read the book 20 years ago. The 70s was notorious for being a... (Source)

Sam BourneThis is an example of the meticulously supreme thriller. John le Carré really is the master of the form, and any list of thrillers has to include that book. It’s a very emboldening book for thriller writers, because it teaches you not to underestimate the understanding of your reader. They can be pushed and pushed. It is an incredibly intricate plot and yet, if you write it well enough, as he... (Source)

Robert BaerLe Carré has the ability to add drama and colour. For classic espionage in a little town in Germany, you can’t do better than le Carré. (Source)

Andy BeckettI find the darkness in le Carré particularly interesting because it’s quite melancholic. It evokes a sadness about Britain and the establishment at that time. There’s a sense of the world closing in. He really captures that in the book. (Source)