On the Strathspey Railway

Book Notes: The Best of A.A. Gill

The back cover of this anthology of the late journalist's columns reads that it is: "by turns controversial, uplifting, unflinching, sad, funny and furious". It is also ranges through being deeply sad, beautifully observed, and written; vulgar, offensive, nasty and brilliant. That's quite a stack of adjectives for one writer!

The book begins with a series of articles from Gill's celebrated food column. There are some terrific bits in here, such as his wonderfully evocative description of life in a busy high-end London restaurant kitchen; his hilarious diatribe against vegetarianism, and his written skewering of certain over-priced, over estimated and under-performing restaurants. This section of the book is rather good fun.

The best section of the book by a country mile is his travel writing which forms its second section. Gill's descriptions, especially of Africa are so moving, vivid and brilliantly observed (both in terms of what he sees, and his own responses to what he sees). His poise, sight and ability to respond to Africa in the most brilliantly chosen words - is at times breathtaking. Quite remarkable. It is in fact the section of the book I will return to again.

The TV section which follows, sees Gill appreciating the good and excoriating the dreadful in popular culture (just as a clue, Alan Bennett = good. Peppa Pig = bad). While the final section entitles "Life" is an odd collection of unlined pieces on things as diverse as Fatherhood, Death, Dyslexia, Pornography, Glastonbury and ageing. On Fatherhood, Gill is quite brilliant, on Glastonbury utterly depressing and on pornography so crude that I honestly couldn't read it - it was actually really unpleasant. 

I picked this book up almost by accident, in search of well-crafted, powerful (even beautiful) prose. Despite the inclusion of a couple of pretty grim articles, the book as a whole didn't disappoint. The writing about Africa in particular was so vivid and compelling, that the reader call almost smell the place. These travel pieces were worth the price of the book alone.