Book Review
The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt. Vintage paperback.
I was listening to The Book Programme on Radio 4 recently when I heard Terry Waite say that the most treasured book on his shelves was The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt. I was aware of Judt as a historian of twentieth century Europe but this book sounded rather different from his other writings. The jacket blurb describes it thus:
“In 2008, historian Tony Judt learnt that he was suffering from a disease that would eventually trap his extraordinary mind in a declining and immobile body. At night, sleepless in his motionless state, he revisited the past in an effort to keep himself sane, and his dictated essays form a memoir unlike any you have read before.
Each one charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt’s prodigious mind. His youthful love of a particular London bus route evolves into a reflection on public civility and interwar urban planning. Memories of the 1968 student riots of Paris meander through the sexual politics of Europe, a series of roadtrips across America lead not just to an appreciation of American history, but to an eventual acquisition of citizenship.
And everything is as simply and beautifully arranged as a Swiss chalet – a reassuring refuge deep in the mountains of memory.”
