The Penguin Book of Fights, Feuds and Heartfelt Hatreds

In this anthology, Philip Kerr takes the reader on a tour of some of the famous and infamous fights, feuds and heartfelt hatreds which have peppered history from the time of Caesar to the present: Knox's invective against women, Dr Johnson's loathing of Americans, a 19th-century duel which lasted for nearly 20 years, the antagonism between Bobby Kennedy and the head of the Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa, the guerrilla war between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during the filming of "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", the icy battle of etiquette between Wallis Simpson and the Queen Mother, Richard Branson versus Malcolm McLaren and the Sex Pistols, Lennon versus McCartney and the clash of the soft drinks empires at war. Reasons rational and irrational have provided the spark that ignites the fuel of hatred, from religion to a fear of insects. The weapons chosen have been as innocuous as scorn, as devastating as genocide. Some antipathies have lasted lifetimes, others only moments, but all illuminate a darker side of human nature. For some, hatred seems to bring a measure of enjoyment. The incurably cantakerous writer Alexander Woollcott "loved a good bicker" and delighted in setting whole bookshops of his fans in a seething rage against him, James Agate had "an unparalleled zest for the most moderate of dislikes" and Hemingway relished his undisputed skill as a master in the gentle art of making enemies. On a more chilling note, Hitler's "justification" of his hatred of the Jewish people is included, as are accounts of Malcolm X's use of racism to counter racism, the code to violence behind the brotherhood of Hell's Angels, the continuing animosity between Protestant and Catholic in Northern Ireland and John Osborne's outburst of spleen against his former wife, Jill Bennett. Philip Kerr has written three crime novels set in the Berlin of the 1930s and '40s: "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal" and "A German Requiem".