Timely tales of pestilence
Professor David Damrosch, the director of Harvard’s Institute for World Literature, fell in love with ‘a fictional realm that I’d…
Solution to 2535: Triplets
Each unclued lights include one letter three times. The wording of the preamble precludes ALLYLS (2D which would be the…
2537: My Lord!
A 21-word exchange appears (apart from two words) in nine unclued entries. The other unclued entry specifies one of the…
Double issue
In Competition No. 3230, you were invited to supply a double acrostic poem, the first and last letters of each…
Puzzle No. 684
White to play. Abdusattorov–Rakhmatullaev, Uzbek Championship 2021. How did White deliver a pretty mate in two moves? Answers should be…
A rioja to beat the new year blues
There was only one flaw in my Christmas this year. I did not spend enough of it with Santa Claus-age…
Fresh start
Chess offers one ultimate consolation in defeat: the opportunity to set the pieces up and start again. At least in…
The Battle for Britain
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Mild at heart
It’s a sweet, green, glowing dawn in north-west Scotland. All around us are empty hillsides of rock and heather. The…
The heat is on
Boiling Point is a single-take drama set during a busy service at a London restaurant and it has to be…
The drugs don’t work
One of my first jobs in journalism was as the arts correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. I’d hop on my…
His thuggish materials
Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust has been adapted at the Bridge. The yarn is set in Oxford, and the…
Brought to book
‘This is not a book,’ is the first line of Paul Gauguin’s final memoir, Avant et Après, written on Hiva…
Second in command
The importance of understudies has been elevated to new heights by the pandemic, says Sarah Crompton
Feathered friends
Unusually for a book about nature, the species in question, in this lucid story of the relationship between birds and…
Shades of grey
In the summer of 1940, after almost 20 years in Paris, Man Ray fled the Nazis for the country of…
A double thriller
‘Whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right…’ The much quoted words of Rodion Raskolnikov, the…
Unlucky in love
James Courage is one of those fine writers who, though he enjoyed considerable success in his lifetime, has now more…
Anything for a laugh
‘I went into show business to make a noise, to pronounce myself,’ Mel Brooks told Kenneth Tynan in 1977, in…
The modern pantheon
In January 1780 the news reached London that Captain Cook had been killed and eaten in Hawaii. The story of…
Bridge
We’re all guilty of making silly mistakes at the bridge table and then hurriedly trying to explain them away —…
The turf
Seen any groundhogs your way? In racing the New Year began much as the old one had ended. At Cheltenham’s…
Real life
Last night I dreamt I went on holiday again. It seemed to me I stood by the departure gate, and…
The translator’s art
‘Read slowly, word by word, if you wish to understand what I am saying.’ Despite appearing in Essays Two, the…
Low life
I listed for Catriona the reasons why I did not want to go out to dinner that evening at the…
