Peter Hitchens on All the King's Men

Peter Hitchens, writing at his Daily Mail blog:

Then I opened the book, and I did not stop reading it till morning. The phone call never did come through. That was, what?, 22 or 23 years ago, and I have in a way, been reading it ever since. I am not sure how many times I have read and re-read it. I sometimes think I know it by heart, but I never do. Each time I read it I find something else. My head is full of pictures – the big car thundering dangerously through the night, the sad houses it visits, the rending descriptions of country solitude and loneliness, of sad, failed parents - and the simply superb brief evocation of how individuals can be left behind by a close relative who achieves greatness, and who is both still present physically in the lives of those close to him, but also gone forever.