Which Mary is which?
Is there a patron saint of conjecture? Perhaps it is a name known only to Bible scholars, who have rich…
Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House is even better on second reading
Having a saint in the family is dreadful, They’re often absent, either literally or emotionally, and because they’re always thinking…
The upsides of dementia: Forgetfulness can be a blessing
My 91-year-old father-in-law has always had a terror of hospitals. This dates from his time as a Royal Marine when,…
Travelling by train – with Anna Karenina
Any memoir is a form of double-entry book-keeping, in which what has been lost is reckoned against what has been…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
Ill-met by gaslight
What is it about Victorian murders that so grips us? The enduring fascination of Jack the Ripper caught the imagination…
The mother of all crimes
During the heatwave in the summer of 1895, the Gentlemen v. Players match at Lords Cricket Ground on 8 July…
Time out of mind
There can hardly be two novelists less alike than Sebastian Faulks and Will Self, in style and in content. Faulks…
Dick Whittington for the 21st century
Novels of such scope and invention are all too rare; unusual, too, are those of real heart, whose characters you…
A noble undertaking
By looking after the dead, funeral directors allow the living to love and mourn them
Throw away the Valium and start bragging instead
This is not a book to be read in solitude. Not for the obvious reason that it’s frightening, but because…
The true flower of dawn
Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…
Beautiful dreamer
Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had…
Short of a feast
Rose Tremain walks on water. Her historical novels are absolutely marvellous, brilliantly plotted, witty and wise, with some of the…
For the term of our unnatural lives
‘To die of age is a rare, singular and extra-ordinary death’, wrote Montaigne, ‘and so much less natural than others:…
Practically perfect in every way
If there were a harvest festival to honour the bounty of the autumnal book crop, the choir would be in…
Lost in transfusion
The Children Act could hardly be more attuned to the temper of the times, appearing just as our newspapers are…
Suffering in silence
A few years ago, after a lifetime of wearing white shirts through which the straps of my white bra were…
Dignity? Forget it!
It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make drawings of your own 97-year-old mother on her…
A perfect stranger
If I had to be marooned on a desert island with a stranger, that stranger would be John Burnside. Not…
Back to Blighty
In the world of Jane Gardam’s stories the past is always present, solid and often unwanted and always too big,…
Gently does it
The word delicate is seldom a compliment. I once threw a saucepan of hot soup out of a fifth storey…
The sound of nervous laughter
It isn’t very often that a writer’s work is so striking that you can remember exactly where and when you…
Damaged love
Any new book by Lorrie Moore is a cause for rejoicing, but her first collection of short stories for 16…
A dangerous heroine addiction
This book arose from an argument. Lifelong bookworm Samantha Ellis and her best friend had gone to Brontë country and…
