Wait until dark
James McConnachie discovers that some of the greatest English writers — Chaucer, Blake, Dickens, Wordsworth, Dr Johnson — drew inspiration and even comfort from walking around London late at night
The parlour-game approach
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
What the eye don’t see
The best books by good writers — and Philip Ball is a very good writer indeed — are sometimes the…
Rags, riches and respectability
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
The Great Game in Arabia
How do you write a new book about T.E. Lawrence, especially when the man himself described his escapades, or a…
Evil under the sun
At the dark heart of this dark book is a startling fact: Joseph Conrad was employed to steam up the…
Garden of earthly delights
It was Hazlitt who said of Hogarth that his pictures ‘breathe a certain close, greasy, tavern air’, and the same…
Writ in stone
James McConnachie finds that theology and geology have been unlikely bedfellows for centuries
Waving, not drowning
Conductors love telling stories, especially stories about other conductors, and every chapter of this otherwise determinedly pragmatic book begins with…
