Butler to the World by Oliver Bullough: ‘highly readable but thoroughly depressing’
Timely analysis of how Britain has helped to launder others’ fortunes

In this “brilliantly funny” and “bittersweet” memoir, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson looks back on his tormented early life, said Kathryn Hughes in The Sunday Times. He emerged, he shows, from “irreconcilable elements”: Anita, his Lithuanian-descended mother, was a woman of “apocalyptic pessimism”, while his father Max, whose roots were Ukrainian, had a “bouncier demeanour”.
As the title – Mother’s Boy – suggests, Jacobson was closer to his mother in temperament. “As a teenager he devoured literature, but was hopeless at the things that were meant to make a macher,” – a player, the sort of man of whom his father approved.
After grammar school, he went to Cambridge and studied under the “influential literary critic F.R. Leavis”, who taught “clever young men” to worship Jane Austen, Henry James and other novelists in the Great Tradition. This ushered Jacobson into his first career – as a lecturer in English at Wolverhampton Polytechnic – but had a “deleterious effect” on his own writing ambitions. “Since I couldn’t be Dickens,” he recalls, “I couldn’t be anybody.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Despite believing that he was “put on Earth to write”, it wasn’t until he was 40 that Jacobson published his first novel, said Frances Wilson in The Spectator. In the meantime, he was deeply unhappy – by his own estimation “a failed husband, a failed father, a failed university lecturer”.
What finally got him over his writer’s block was the realisation that he shouldn’t shrink from his Jewishness; instead, he could embrace it unapologetically in his work – and as a result he “broke new ground”, becoming Britain’s answer to Philip Roth. Both “very funny” and “profoundly serious”, Mother’s Boy is a superb memoir. “If there is a better contemporary account of the cost of becoming a writer I’ve yet to read it.”
Jonathan Cape 288pp £18.99; The Week Bookshop £14.99
The Week Bookshop
To order this title or any other book in print, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk, or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
The worst coral bleaching event breaks records
The Explainer Bleaching has now affected 84% of the world's coral reefs
By Justin Klawans, The Week US
-
Nayib Bukele: the Salvadoran ally in Trump's deportation machine
In the Spotlight El Salvador's popular strongman rose to power promising to make his country safe
By David Faris
-
Magazine solutions - May 2, 2025
Puzzles and Quizzes Issue - May 2, 2025
By The Week US
-
Ghosts: a 'scorching' retelling of Ibsen's scandalous tale
The Week Recommends Gary Owen's modern revamp of the classic play is a 'cracker'
By The Week UK
-
Holy Cow: a charming 'micro-budget' film about Comté
The Week Recommends First-time director Louise Courvoisier elicits 'brilliant performances' from her non-professional cast
By The Week UK
-
The Story of Murder: a 'thoughtful' fictional retelling of a true crime story
The Week Recommends Hallie Rubenhold novel delivers belated justice to the victim of a 1910 London murder
By The Week UK
-
Film reviews: Sinners and The King of Kings
Feature Vampires lay siege to a Mississippi juke joint and an animated retelling of Jesus' life
By The Week US
-
Music reviews: Bon Iver, Valerie June, and The Waterboys
Feature "Sable, Fable," "Owls, Omens, and Oracles," "Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper"
By The Week US
-
Susan Page's 6 favorite books about historical figures who stood up to authority
Feature The USA Today's Washington bureau chief recommends works by Catherine Clinton, Alexei Navalny, and more
By The Week US
-
Book reviews: 'The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip' and 'Who Is Government? The Untold Story of Public Service'
Feature The tech titan behind Nvidia's success and the secret stories of government workers
By The Week US
-
Mario Vargas Llosa: The novelist who lectured Latin America
Feature The Peruvian novelist wove tales of political corruption and moral compromise
By The Week US