A New York version of Private Eye. Spy had hard news and satirical spoofs. Carter’s memoir When The Going Was Good (Grove Press £20) is a rollercoaster ride through his life in magazine publishing. His stories at Spy are far more interesting than those hobnobbing (and name-dropping) at the Oscars party.

One year-long prank involved setting up a fake company called National Refund Clearinghouse which had its own bank-authorised cheques. The idea was to send cheques to assorted millionaires (TV moguls, celebs, bankers) for the piddling amount of $1.11 and in increasingly insignificant amounts thereafter. Who among the rich would go to the trouble of banking such measly amounts? Well two did for a cheque worth only 13 cents! One was the multimillionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and the other was Big Apple prime property magnate Donald Trump.

In the last 10 years the fortunes of Britain’s high streets have changed. Where once there were ironmongers and newsagents now there are vape shops and nail bars. Once Leith Walk’s fortunes looked imperilled by the seemingly endless tram works. Now the thoroughfare has the look and feel of a European boulevard although some Leithers miss the more characterful past. The Bookshop, the Draper, the Candlestick Maker by Annie Gray (Profile Books £22) is far more than just the story of shopping. She calls the high street the beating heart of a city or town although many boarded-up shopping streets today appear to be on life support.

One 19th century innovation, the department store, once called an ‘Adam-less Eden’ by Emile Zola, is now virtually a thing of the past.

The 2008 economic crash, Brexit, the credit crunch, fast fashion, Covid and online home deliveries have all been hammer blows to the high street experience.

‘It’s easy to paint a picture of doom on British high streets,’ writes Gray, ‘but that’s not completely fair. In any case, if closures outnumber openings – so what. The number of shops has been steadily decreasing since the 1920s.’ Despite recent upheavals, in 2020 nearly 80% of people surveyed said high streets were important to the local community.

Is there a pop act that’s had more words and analysis expended on it than the Beatles? Can there be anything left to say on the genius of Lennon and McCartney? Ian Leslie’s John and Paul (Faber £20) is a revelatory account of the duo’s relationship as friends, rivals and collaborators; their brotherly love and sibling-like rivalry.

The book looks at the pair chronologically through 43 of their songs adding context and colour. There are musicological insights on how the hits were constructed along with trenchant psychological observations. Take 1968’s top-seller ‘Hey Jude’. 

Originally ‘Hey Jules’, an ode to Lennon’s son Julian, it is ‘almost unique in the annals of pop: a song sung by a man to a close male friend,’ writes Ian Leslie. ‘[There’s] an obvious precursor, also written or initiated by Paul McCartney: “She Loves You”’.

The Beatles’ songs are akin to old folk music, something sung to us as babies. We might think we know the songs so well they have become bland but careful and considered listening is always rewarding. As Leslie writes about ‘Eleanor Rigby’: ‘its cultural ubiquity has stopped us noticing how strange it is.’

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Today’s millennials might grow misty-eyed over Beyonce’s first album but for others the ghastly taste of 50 years ago – the 1970s – furnishes their happy place: orange shag rugs, tie-dyed tee-shirts, enigmatic prog rock album covers…

Back in the 70s, a time of three-day weeks and power cuts, people looked back 50 years too to the jollier, less-complicated Jazz Age of the 1920s. Teens in Oxford Bags queued up to see The Great Gatsby film (1974) much as today’s twentysomethings look on the 70s through rose-coloured Lennon granny glasses.

Geoff Dyer’s Homework (Canongate £20) is a tender, touching and very funny memoir of a bright working-class kid growing up: Airfix models, gloopy dayglo custard, demonic playground bullies, snot-encrusted hankies. Dyer captures well his childhood in the 60s and teen years in the 70s, a period still tinged with clammy post-war austerity.

Bluesky: kenwilson84.bsky.social