Latest news with #masculinity
ABC News
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Wild One: Keyo Roses Flying Circus - A Man
Whirling camerawork, throbbing lights, and questions about what it really means to be 'A Man' all await under the psychedelic big-top of this Wild One — the first ever video from Naarm act Keyo Roses Flying Circus. Directed by Hugo Morgan, 'A Man' combines distorted frames, fluid camera manoeuvres, and choppy cuts for a video that is truly trippy. Shot in the Northcote Theatre, Hugo, Keyo and the team wanted to create an uninterrupted performance that invites the viewer into the theatre as the only patron. "All the movement is continuous," explains Hugo, "but we also played with continuity and lighting to shape the environment and guide the audience through the different sections of the track.' 'This song is a conception of many hours spent smoking cigarettes in my room, unravelling the rope of masculinity to find balance and identity' says circus conductor Keyo Rhodes. 'I suppose it questions the idea of a man, the conflict between grace and strength, and if you dance around a bit things usually make more sense.'
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Carnegie medal for writing: Margaret McDonald named youngest ever winner
Two books about male friendship and masculinity have been announced as winners in the latest Carnegie awards, which highlight the best new books for children and young people. This year saw 27-year-old Margaret McDonald become the youngest ever winner of the Carnegie medal for writing, which is judged by a panel of librarians. McDonald's winning debut, Glasgow Boys, is a coming-of-age novel about the friendship between two boys who have grown up in the care system. Another book focused on male friendship, King of Nothing by Nathanael Lessore, was voted winner in a separate prize judged by young people from reading groups in schools and libraries who shadowed the judging process for the flagship award. The Carnegie medal for illustration was awarded to Olivia Lomenech Gill for Clever Crow, written by Chris Butterworth. The shadowers' choice medal for illustration went to Homebody by Theo Parish. The winners were announced at a ceremony at the Cambridge theatre in London on Thursday. McDonald and Lomenech Gill were awarded £5,000 each, while Lessore and Parish were given £500 each to donate to libraries of their choice. Writing Glasgow Boys, McDonald worked with a children's therapist to depict the care system in an authentic way. The novel, which incorporates Scots dialect, is 'an immersive and visceral read that completely draws the reader into the present and past lives of Finlay and Banjo', said judging chair Ros Harding. 'Neither of [the characters] can remember the last time they had a hug; both are determined to hold on at all costs to the uncertain hope of a brighter future', wrote Imogen Russell Williams in a Guardian review. The book 'is a paean to the power of friendship, and daring to be vulnerable in the face of past hurt'. McDonald is donating her prize money to Action for Children, which helps young people in care and other vulnerable groups of children, while Lomenech Gill plans to use the money for a project supporting schools, education and libraries in Palestine. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Working on Clever Crow 'was a great opportunity to learn more about these very clever and sociable birds, and I hope that the book might encourage readers to look at crows from a different viewpoint than the rather negative stereotype as portrayed in fairy tales, horror movies, and Hitchcock,' said Lomenech Gill. The shadowers' choice winner for writing, King of Nothing, is a teen comedy about an unlikely friendship between two boys. Earlier this year, the novel topped the older readers category in the Waterstones children's book prize and won the Jhalak children's and young adult prize. 'It's testament to Lessore's lightness of touch and believable characters that despite delving into big topics such as toxic masculinity and grief, this is an immensely readable book that never feels too worthy,' wrote Fiona Noble in the Guardian. Homebody, the shadowers' choice winner for illustration, follows 'the protagonist's search for self-acceptance, so that the house of their body can feel like a true home', wrote Imogen Russell Williams in the Guardian. 'Investigating the subtleties of trans and non-binary identities, its soft greys and pinks and joyful emphasis on self-discovery will appeal to Heartstopper fans.' The Carnegie writing medal was established in 1936, while the illustration prize was launched in 1955. Previous winners of the writing award include Frank Cottrell Boyce, CS Lewis, Philip Pullman and Ruta Sepetys; past illustration winners include Shirley Hughes, Quentin Blake and Lauren Child. Last year, Joseph Coelho won the writing award for The Boy Lost in the Maze, illustrated by Kate Milner, while Aaron Becker took home the illustration medal for The Tree and the River.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The play that changed my life: ‘Daniel Kaluuya winked at me and my mum – and said he acted better for us'
My mother has always been my champion and has pumped culture into me for a very long time. Theatre and the arts were part of our bonding. She used to say, if you see a show that you like the look of, I'll get tickets. So I'd go on the Royal Court website and if there were many black people in the cast, I'd want to go because I could see myself. I would have been around 16 when I saw Sucker Punch by Roy Williams. It's about two young men who know that their bodies can be a kind of tool to better themselves so they fall into boxing. An aspiring white promoter zeroes in on their talent. It is about rivalry, but also about how community works together, and is a really good investigation of masculinity and the ownership of black bodies. I had been to shows at the Royal Court before but they transformed the space for Sacha Wares' 2010 production. It was completely 360-degree, in the round. I remember the accuracy of the boxing ring, the ropes. It was visceral. The actors were dripping with sweat. And when they moved, we moved, because we thought we were going to get punched! The acting felt so charged and so full-body, as if they'd been plucked from the street. We were fully in it – as if you could ultimately step into the characters' roles if you just walked a couple of metres. It felt very real. I came away feeling, I need to understand how this is made. It was my first time seeing Daniel Kaluuya. I remember him winking at me and my mum in the audience. And Mum shoved me in front of Daniel afterwards. He said it had felt special for him seeing us in the audience because so often the audience is white. He said: 'I acted better for you.' I was a Stagecoach kid – I had been to their classes from a very young age to do drama, singing and dancing. But by that time I was not gagging to be where Daniel Kaluuya was. I had no idea directing could be a career – I wanted to become a barrister. When I realised there was this role, that you could create the vision, that you were actually the orchestrator of the actors, my mind really just opened. I was like, wow, that's where my skill set lies. Years later, after university, I joined the Young Vic's introduction to directing course and Sacha Wares was the programme leader. So I walked into her room and said, gosh, the best show I've ever watched was made by you. Please tell me everything … Marie and Rosetta by George Brant, directed by Monique Touko, is at Chichester Festival theatre, 25 June-26 July As told to Lindesay Irvine
Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Arnold Schwarzenegger: ‘If my children outdo me, I'm in heaven'
We are sitting beside a roaring fireplace in an outdoor sitting room next to Arnold Schwarzenegger's swimming pool, discussing masculinity, when the pig starts to get noisy. 'Schnelly,' he calls. 'Would you like a cookie?' Schnelly snuffles and snorts. 'Come,' he says. 'Let's feed Schnelly.' The enormous pet pig follows us inside to the kitchen. Schnelly knows exactly where the cookie jar lives. Schwarzenegger passes me an oat cookie and the pig gently eats it from my hand. A tiny geriatric Yorkshire terrier called Cherry joins us, fresh from her weekly bath. A mobile grooming team are in a van parked on the front driveway primping his two other dogs, one a leonberger called Schnitzel, the other an Alaskan malamute called Dutch weighing 11 stone. He points outside to the sofa where I was sitting. 'Schnelly likes to cuddle up on there in the evenings.' It seems doubtful the pig could get up on the sofa — his belly practically drags on the ground. 'Yes, yes, look,' he says tenderly, leading us back to the sofa to point out Schnelly's little custom-made step. The pig waddles back to his pen beside the pool in which Schwarzenegger kept his Rodin sculptures safe underwater during LA's wildfires earlier this year. The blaze came perilously close; a blackened line scars the hills beyond his lawn. He settles back into his alfresco leather armchair and lights a fat cigar. This isn't how I'd pictured the interview. It was supposed to take place over breakfast at a hotel in Santa Monica where he eats every morning after working out at Gold's Gym near Venice Beach. I'd found him at a restaurant table with his chief of staff, who used to work in the White House and looks like a Californian personal trainer, a German bodybuilder turned movie star and an old Austrian friend with whom Schwarzenegger trained that morning. I was wondering how on earth this was going to work, when he gestures to my Dictaphone. 'It's a very noisy place. Stone floor, hard ceiling, hard walls, glass. So there is nowhere to absorb the sound. I don't know why we set this up here.' I'd been worrying about that, I agree. 'Don't do thinking and worrying. Let's eat, then we'll go to my house.' Heads turn as we pass through the hotel lobby and a young man and his mother ask for a selfie. 'Of course. Is this your sister?' Schwarzenegger asks. The woman swoons with delight. Does he always say that? ' Always!' He chuckles. 'And it always works!' So now we're at his 18,000 sq ft mansion in the hills of Brentwood. It features an impressive home gym but he prefers to work out at Gold's, a rough-and-ready place the size of an aircraft hangar that anyone can join. I'd passed it on my way to breakfast and had spotted him from the pavement, among the grizzled musclemen working out on the weight machines in the gym car park. Most celebrities consider their fame the unwelcome price of success, I observe to him, but I detect no hostility in him towards his. He narrows his eyes thoughtfully and nods. 'You're absolutely right. What people miss the most is to get attention. That someone knows them, is aware of them, that they're somebody. And so they go to a shrink. They lie on the couch and someone is listening to them. But I go out anywhere to a crowd and they all listen. And they love to listen to my shit, right? I'm having fifty thousand shrinks sitting out there, and I don't pay a f***ing penny. I get paid! So how can I complain about that?' A growl of happy laughter erupts from him. 'OK, yes, there are times when you go to a restaurant and someone comes up and says, can I take a picture of you? But I can walk into this restaurant at any time, I can sit at any table I want, I make no reservation. For that I take a picture with someone. It takes three minutes. So why would I complain?' At 77, Schwarzenegger may well be the happiest person I've ever interviewed — or possibly ever met. He finds literally nothing to complain about during our four hours together. Even Donald Trump, whose presidency he abhors, cannot rile him. 'This country's going through a difficult moment but it's not the end of the world,' he says. If you close your eyes he sounds a lot like a shrink himself, sonorous and calm, and his physical bearing is equally measured. He is a great believer in setting goals and it's easy to see why, because almost everything in his life has gone precisely to plan. He was born in an Austrian village in 1947, the son of a former Nazi stormtrooper who returned from the war with PTSD and a drink problem. Schwarzenegger grew up in a spartan house with no plumbing but regular beatings, and at ten set his heart on America. He started lifting weights at 15, and when he came across an issue of Muscle Builder magazine featuring Reg Park, a former football player from Leeds who had won Mr Universe and gone on to star in Hollywood movies, Schwarzenegger decided he would too. He trained fanatically, became the youngest person to win the title of Mr Universe at 20 and moved to Los Angeles a year later. While winning multiple more bodybuilding titles he studied English and business, and had made his first million in property deals before retiring from professional bodybuilding in 1975. But when he told Hollywood agents he wanted to become a film star, 'everyone said, 'I don't understand what the f*** you're saying, you sound scary, you sound like a f***ing Nazi, and no one is going to buy you in America' '. Intensive accent training and relentless acting classes led to a series of modest parts, one of which won him a Golden Globe for best newcomer, before his 1982 breakout role in Conan the Barbarian. A year later he fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming an American citizen. The following year he starred in The Terminator, became a global movie star and in 1986 married into the Kennedy dynasty with a star-studded wedding to Maria Shriver, JFK's niece. His very first words to Shriver's mother, a formidable Massachusetts matriarch, had been unpromising — 'Your daughter has a nice ass' — so I ask how he explains his capacity to change, more than possibly anyone in public life. 'It was all a learning process, which was fine for me, because I always felt like my brain is a kind of sponge that wants to absorb a lot of information. And the same happened with politics.' A darling of the Republican Party, despite his marriage to a Democrat, he served as President George HW Bush's fitness czar in the 1990s, and in 2003 stood for governor of California. 'I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do with California. It just flashed in my mind. I saw thousands of people and I saw me telling them, 'I will save you. I will save the state, don't worry.' This vision was just always there. But there was a lot of stuff I still needed to learn, so I was sitting right here every night till one in the morning.' Campaign advisers swam in the pool while they took turns to coach him. 'A woman from financing was telling me about the budget, then she would get tired after an hour and then the next guy was drying himself and sitting down in his white bathing suit and talking to me about energy. Then he got back in the pool and someone else talked about campaigning. So you learn.' After he won, his wife told him, 'I don't think I've ever watched anyone that is as competitive as you are. But the question now is, would you be at all interested in policy — or is it just politics?' He allows a rueful grin and widens his eyes. 'I didn't really know until I got in there. And then I found out that I was so curious. I wanted to know how everything really worked. And then my wife says a year later, 'Oh man, was I wrong. You are becoming a policy wonk.' ' Schwarzenegger governed California until the end of his two-term limit in 2011, during which he passed groundbreaking environmental legislation, including the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, and reduced the state's emissions by 25 per cent. Had the constitution not disbarred candidates born outside America, he would have gone on to run for president. The one chapter in his life he did not plan came just weeks after he left office, when his wife of 25 years left him. The couple had four children, then 21, 19, 17 and 13, and the marriage had been strained by his years working away in the state capital, Sacramento. But it was Shriver's suspicion that he was the father of their Guatemalan housekeeper's 13-year-old son, Joseph, that led them to couples therapy. Shriver had stood by her husband when allegations surfaced in 2003 of sexual misconduct against 15 women. 'I have done things that were not right, which I thought then were playful,' he said at the time. 'But now I recognise that I offended people. I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologise.' She didn't know he'd also had an affair with their housekeeper. When Joseph was born, Schwarzenegger had no idea he was the father. By the time the boy was eight the resemblance had become unmistakable, and he assumed financial responsibility for him and his mother — but kept the secret until challenged directly in a therapy session. He confessed and Shriver filed for divorce. The biographical parallels with Donald Trump are uncanny. They are just a year apart in age — Trump turned 79 yesterday; Schwarzenegger will be 78 next month. Both are multimillionaire property investors who launched Republican political careers from screen stardom, both have complicated family lives and a string of allegations of sexual misconduct. Just like Trump, he is big on social media and a world expert in condensing politics into catchphrases, with a huge following of young men. In temperament, however, they could not be more different. 'The overall theme of everything I do today,' Schwarzenegger says, 'is to make the world a better place. To entertain people, to get them fit, to make them feel good about themselves.' I ask if he shares the growing concern that masculinity is in crisis, with young men drawn to online misogyny. He claims to have never even heard of Andrew Tate, but reflects, 'The majority of people have a problem. They feel down, depressed, not in a good mood. People come up to me in the gym and ask, 'How can I get up in the morning and feel good?' Well, I'm not an expert in psychology and all this stuff. But I tell them, what works for me is not to think. So therefore, don't think. Just work out and struggle and fight. This will make you feel good mentally.' What else do young men need? 'I don't know if I have the solution or not. But when I think about my kids, none of them have that problem. And the reason is because there was a strong father there. I gave them discipline and didn't let them get away with anything. And they were taught how to make their beds, they were taught how to wash their clothes. Because it's like the way I grew up.' Then he gets out his iPad to show me videos of him painting Mother's Day cards with his two young granddaughters and his expression melts as he points out their rapt gaze. 'So I think that kids need a father and a mother. It's always the key. And if they don't have a father, some other male has to come in.' His chief of staff, who helps manage his social media, mentions how many of his young male followers lack a father figure. It's the role Schwarzenegger enjoys most. His only brother died in a car crash in Austria at the age of 24, leaving a three-year-old son, Patrick. Schwarzenegger brought his nephew to the US at 19, put him through college, got him a job at Gold's Gym and he is now a successful entertainment lawyer in LA. 'Of course he missed his father but that we couldn't do anything about. He was dead. So now it was just surrounding him with the support and with male reinforcement, to say this is what you should do. The male dominance, that's what they idolise.' He has a close relationship with Joseph, now 27, who is also a bodybuilder, actor and property investor. 'He's a religious fanatic about training,' Schwarzenegger says, beaming proudly. 'He has a really good physique and he's doing really well with his real estate and with his acting.' Schwarzenegger's oldest son, also called Patrick, 31, is an actor too, and recently starred in The White Lotus. 'Patrick never asked me a question about acting. But he came many times to me and said, 'I just did an interview with this magazine and two thirds of the questions were about you.' But I was just in New York and a journalist comes up and says, 'What's it like being the father of Patrick Schwarzenegger?' ' Delight floods his features. 'All of a sudden, everything has changed around. I walk into the gym now and it used to be the girls would come up and give me their contact. And then after White Lotus comes out, the girl comes up and says, 'Here's my contact, give it to Patrick.' So it's wonderful. If I go to my grave and know that my son has outdone me, I'm in heaven.' His eldest daughter, Katherine, 35, is a successful author married to the film star Chris Pratt. My 14-year-old son wanted me to ask who would win in a fight between Pratt and Schwarzenegger. He considers this seriously. 'Good question. I don't know.' His other daughter, Christina, 33, is a producer but keeps a lower profile. Very little is known about his youngest, Christopher, 27, except that he recently lost a lot of weight. Being heavily overweight since early childhood in this athletic and famous family must have been hard. I wonder if it was also difficult for his father. 'You're telling me. I could never go and say to him, you're overweight. We just kept introducing healthy foods. We introduced him always to the gym and all of that kind of stuff. And then, out of nowhere, he decided that he wanted to be lean. And now he is. So that is of course fantastic, the self-discipline and the self-motivation. I always felt one day it will have to come from him — and it did.' • Arnold Schwarzenegger: I've turned to self-help. First tip — take a daily jacuzzi Schwarzenegger's partner since 2013 is a physiotherapist and former gymnast, Heather Milligan, 50, whom I meet briefly, and who looks remarkably like Gabby Logan. The couple follow a largely vegan diet, so I ask if — other than cigars — he has any vices. 'You should probably ask my girlfriend. Oh, or my wife,' he says, chuckling indulgently. 'She would definitely find a few.' He and his ex-wife have maintained a strikingly good relationship, of which he is tremendously proud. In April she published her memoir, I Am Maria, in which she writes of the end of the marriage, 'It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me,' but also details her journey to forgiveness. I ask if he has read it. 'I will. She brought it over the other day, as a matter of fact. My daughters tell me it's really good.' He very rarely gets angry, he says, but cries easily. The national anthem often moves him to tears and sentimental movies make him weep buckets. At this point in life, I ask, does anything make him nervous? 'Whenever I have to perform. The heart rate goes up and I feel my heart pounding, before I do a speech, before the camera, when the director says, 'Rolling.' Every time.' The surprise on my face seems to please him. 'I pretend that I have my act together but I don't always feel like I do,' he says. 'I just cover it up pretty well.' His three entirely different careers continue to this day, with a daily fitness newsletter, Arnold's Pump Club, a weight-training app, The Pump, and his annual Arnold Sports Festival and Arnold Classic bodybuilding contest. He is still acting, with the second season of Fubar, his Netflix spy action drama, released this month and The Man with the Bag, an action-comedy film, coming out at Christmas. But the thing he is best at, he says, is selling. 'I always had, what we say in Austria, the Schmäh.' His eyes twinkle. 'The bullshit.' In other words, salesmanship. His political career is now focused on selling environmentalism, the cause he achieved most for when governor. Since 2017 he has held an annual climate conference in Vienna, gathering together environmentalists from more than 80 countries. 'But our conference is concentrating on communication rather than,' and he pulls a withering face, 'signing agreements that don't mean anything.' I attended this year's conference at the beginning of the month. The day began with a surprise announcement on the city's public transport system, broadcast to commuters every 30 minutes: 'Here is your chief mobility officer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, talking to you. Thank you for your commitment to a healthy planet. You're all real climate action heroes.' Austria's president, Alexander Van der Bellen, hosted the conference in his imperial 13th-century palace, where speakers ranged from Tony Blair to the former Formula 1 champion Nico Rosberg, the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg and a member of the cast from the US version of The Office. Blair opened the conference, announcing, 'Only twice have my kids ever said, 'That's cool.' Once when I appeared on The Simpsons and last month when Arnold posted a photo of me and him with Danny DeVito.' The host of a TV show called American Ninja Warrior, a giant of a man, emceed in the style of a WWE presenter. The secretary-general of the United Nations addressed the ballroom via video from New York, Austria's newly elected chancellor made a speech and BossHoss, a heavily tattooed German country rock band dressed in cowboy boots and stetsons, performed a new track that features Schwarzenegger delivering his immortal line, 'I'll be back.' The ballroom became a forest of upheld iPhones as Schwarzenegger took to the stage. 'Stop whining and get to work,' he urged his audience. 'We've got to terminate pollution.' He told them how he passed legislation in California. 'Did we whine like girlie men? No! And now we must terminate pollution.' All royal protocol went out the window when he suggested, 'Join us for lunch with the president.' Startled palace aides scuttled off to rearrange place name settings and I followed Schwarzenegger, his girlfriend and his retinue along acres of red carpet, through baroque grandeur and lavish gilt leaf to a grand dining room. It was not a normal climate change conference. In LA he tells me how he hates talking about climate change — 'it's a bullshit f***ing name' — so he came up with the phrase 'terminate pollution' instead because 'everyone knows what that means'. Two years ago in Washington he asked a group of 20 Republicans, 'How many of you are interested in fighting pollution? They all raised their hands. So I said, well, what about climate change? And it became right away, 'We don't know if this is true. This is maybe a hoax.' So why have that debate?' How does he feel about the phrase net zero? 'Well, this is a bullshit thing too! Go to a town like Leeds or Manchester and ask people, what's net zero? They don't know what the f*** that means.' I remind him that Blair caused a big fuss in the UK recently by criticising net zero targets. 'But it's all bogus!' he exclaims. 'Because that's not the argument. The argument is, how do we go and terminate pollution? It's not fighting about net zero or, oh, how many percentage points have you rolled it back from the 1990 level. What's 1990 to do with anything? It's just a stupid dialogue. Let's just start rolling back the pollution output by 25 per cent. And that's exactly what we did in California.' Isn't the problem that his country is now run by a man who promised to drill, baby, drill? 'Washington maybe is not in the mood right now to do that, but that doesn't mean I have to wait for them. Because the biggest movements in history were created by people, not by government. So let's not concentrate on what Trump says. Let's concentrate on what we can do to inspire people.' Boris Johnson, he points out, introduced Boris Bikes to London. 'And now every city in the world has these bikes! And when Saturday Night Fever came out, there was no government contract that said you have to build discotheques. But the entire world was suddenly building discotheques! So it just shows you the power of communication and the power of movies.' Of all the movie characters he has played, he says the one he'd choose to be in real life is Julius from Twins, and I can see why. Julius was sweetly innocent, naive to the point of childlike, yet highly intelligent. Schwarzenegger's own philosophy is a not dissimilar blend of deceptively cartoonish simplicity and prodigious sophistication. He takes another puff on his cigar. 'Look, here's the bottom line. Whenever a car company comes out with a new model, they have an ad agency that looks at that car very carefully. They pay the company millions of dollars to work out how to sell that car. Do you think the environmentalists ever hired that company and said, can you help us to craft a way of communicating with the masses?' A sigh of cigar smoke punctuates his disappointment. 'Environmentalists,' he adds kindly, 'their heart is in the right place and I'm very fond of their work. But their communication skills really suck.'
Telegraph
5 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
The novels every 16-year-old boy should read
It's hard to be a boy. A few years ago, such a statement would be unthinkable. After all, we were told we lived in an enlightened world where traditionally 'masculine' qualities – strength, fortitude, stoicism – were outdated, even toxic. No longer. Almost weekly, we get a new headline decrying the difficulty of being a young man. Andrew Tate, the manosphere, Adolescence: the crisis of boyhood, especially among poor, working-class boys, is well attested to. And last week the National Literacy Trust found that reading enjoyment for boys aged 11-16 is at the lowest level it has been for two decades; for girls, by contrast, it was slightly improved. What's to be done? One solution, of course, is to find books that boys want to read. By themselves, books won't teach you how to move through the world as a man. But there are few better places to start: books are invitations to other worlds, other minds. There is no better tool for empathy. My boyhood reading is what made me who I am today. As a teenager, my tastes were omnivorous and hopelessly pretentious. But the book which stayed with me the most was Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. As a young man, I was thrilled by adventure and the sense of possibility that lay off the edge of old maps and half-understood languages. Now though, as a slightly less young man, I turn back to it for its quiet, gentle humanity. For me, the process of growing up through – and with – books, has above all been about grasping one message: to be a great man is easy. But to be a good man? That is truly tough. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier First published in 1956, The Silver Sword tells the story of three Polish children Edek, Bronia and Ruth, caught up in the chaos of the Second World War, who with the help of an older boy, Jan, set off across Europe in search of their vanished parents. It's a cracking adventure story, with improving lessons about courage, friendship and loyalty. It first enthralled me when I was about 14, enthralled my son and more recently enthralled my grandson. Mick Brown Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh When I was 16 and thinking of trying to get into Cambridge to read English my marvellous English master gave me a pile of novels, plays and poetry to consume, reaching far outside the English A-level course. Hidden among the heavy novels was a slim volume called Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh. I had never read anything like it; jokes on every page, many of them quite offensive, ridicule of the aristocracy, the church, the penal system and above all schools, and all told in a relentless narrative drive that caused me to finish the book in two or three hours. I had within weeks read everything else that Waugh wrote, and I doubt I was the only youth on whom he had that effect. His style is magnificent and his appeal irresistible. Simon Heffer by Geoffrey Household I can imagine that many teenage boys would find the reckless, solitary narrator of Household's classic thriller as easy to identify with as Adrian Mole. Published a few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, the book begins with the protagonist taking it on himself to assassinate an unnamed foreign leader (recognisably Hitler); failing, he goes on the run and ends up hiding from his pursuers in a hole in the ground in the 'green depths' of Dorset. The classic novel of how to draw on your inner resources to survive, it's the most exciting, vicarious adventure I've experienced. Jake Kerridge The Short Stories of HG Wells by HG Wells Long before there was Black Mirror, there was HG Wells cracking out some of the weirdest, most thought-provoking stories ever written. They're short; they don't dwell too much on character development; and they twist the mind in all sorts of new directions. The Country of the Blind and The Door in the Wall are classics, but there's plenty more to grab the teen imagination here. Enjoyed Supacell on Netflix? Take a sip of The New Accelerator, the elixir that makes movement so rapid it can set your clothes on fire. Like superheroes? Check out The Man Who Could Work Miracles. These stories are the foundation stones of science-fiction. Whole universes await. Chris Harvey Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Don't let the fact that the title is a part of a Macbeth soliloquy put off the teenager in your life: Gabrielle Zevin's novel is really a paean to the magic of video games and young, mixed-sex friendships. The story of Sam and Sadie – childhood best friends who grew apart but rekindle their relationship and start a successful games studio – is modern, literary but accessible and, above all, an absorbing tale. While many parents fret about their children spending too much time playing video games rather than reading books, Tomorrow … could be an effective gateway to the joys of literature. I only wish that it had been published when I was a boy, rather than (as I did) reading it on my honeymoon. Liam Kelly The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut I haven't dared pick up a Vonnegut for 20 years. I fear he is one of those habits you probably ought to have dropped by your twenties, like picking your nose or minding who wins football matches. But I was a huge Vonnegut guy in my teens. Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions tend to be recommended but the one I really loved was The Sirens of Titan. It is so stuffed full of madcap ideas that no AI or video game could ever compete. Sadly I can't see how the plot would be relevant to readers today: it is about an astronomically wealthy man who finances a trip to Mars and imperils all of humanity. Ed Cumming by Adrian Tchaikovsky In my own teenage years, science fiction offered an exciting bridge to grown-up literature, with big ideas expressed in the fine prose of Ray Bradbury, Ursula K Le Guin, Philip K Dick and Kurt Vonnegut. Recently, one of my sons was having so much fun reading Dogs of War by contemporary British sci-fi star Adrian Tchaikovsky that I dove in myself. It's a mind-boggling story that extrapolates the genetically modified animals of HG Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau into a cyberpunk future not far removed from our own. The narrator is a heavily armed dog named Rex, and the tale addresses moral quandaries around artificial intelligence, slavery, animal welfare and the ethics of warfare with wit and pathos. My son and I have already gobbled up the excellent sequel, 2021's brilliant Bear Head, and eagerly await volume three, Bee Speaker (due later this year). Neil McCormick Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen'. If that stark opening line doesn't hook them in, then doubtful readers can be assured that the ensuing pages contain the most perturbing futuristic vision of England ever written, a world of constant surveillance, ever-changing jargon, physical violence, sinister authority and the crushing of individuality; in short everything a teenage boy may feel is already the case but magnified to the nth degree. Any young reader will emerge from Orwell 's suspenseful masterpiece armed with a handy range of sharp political and philosophical concepts and inspired to devour more where that came from. Dominic Cavendish
