Reluctant servant of the Raj: Burma Sahib, by Paul Theroux, reviewed
Few personal details survive about Eric Blair’s life as a policeman in Burma, making his years in the East fertile ground for the novelist
From teenage delinquent to man of letters: James Campbell’s remarkable career
The great age of the Scottish autodidact must have ended a century ago, but it had a prodigious impact while…
A book trade romp: Sour Grapes, by Dan Rhodes, reviewed
Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…
My father, the tyrant: Robert Edric describes a brutal upbringing
In a career stretching back to the mid-1980s, Robert Edric has so far managed a grand total of 28 novels,…
A complex creation myth: Alexandria, by Paul Kingsnorth, reviewed
‘Challenging stuff,’ my wife remarked, having alighted on the page of Paul Kingsnorth’s new novel in which a character named…
Would Faber & Faber still exist without T.S. Eliot?
Like many a 20th-century publishing house, the fine old firm of Faber & Faber came about almost by accident. The…
Ghosts of the past haunt Pat Barker’s bomb-strewn London
If the early Martin Amis is instantly recognisable by way of its idiosyncratic slang (‘rug-rethink’, ‘going tonto’ etc) then the…
Barbara Pym: a woman scorned
Anyone who has ever listened to the thump of a rejected manuscript descending cheerlessly on to the mat can take…
Hilary Mantel’s fantasy about killing Thatcher is funny. Honest
Heaven knows what the millions of purchasers of the Man Booker-winning Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies will make…
The thrill of the (postmodern neo-Victorian) chase
Charles Palliser’s debut novel The Quincunx appeared as far back as 1989. Lavish and labyrinthine, this shifted nigh on a…
