A voyage of literary discovery: Clara Reads Proust, by Stéphane Carlier, reviewed
A 23-year-old hairdresser casually picks up a copy of Swann’s Way left behind by a client – only to find the novel taking over her life
Victims of a cruel prejudice: the last two men to be executed for sodomy in England
Chris Bryant describes in painful detail how James Pratt and John Smith, working-class men from the Midlands, fell foul of the ‘bloodthirsty English justice system’ in 1835
A redemptive fable: Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips, reviewed
Set in the Appalachian Mountains, the novel centres around a family struggling to survive domestic abuse and abandonment in the aftermath of the American civil war
Escape into the wild: Run to the Western Shore, by Tim Pears, reviewed
A chieftain’s daughter flees an arranged marriage with the Roman governor of Britain, enlisting the help of slave and risking both their lives
Stark realities
Lawyers, teachers, architects and engineers all enjoy sex behind the scenes at a Houston gay bar in a novel focusing on relationships among black urban men
The schoolgirl crush that never went away: Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain reviewed
A delicate, funny and generous-hearted novel about thwarted love and its aftermath in a 1960s Middle England
Literary charades
Blending fact and fiction, France combines a tale of antics on a creative writing course with episodes from her family life
Carry on curate: scenes of modern clerical life
The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie regales us with stories of mistaken identity, hymns with erotic undertones and an archbishop’s surprising take on Lenten penance
In the fascist grip
A French widower’s horror at his elder son’s involvement with the Front National grows ever deeper as violence escalates
Artistic achievements that changed the world
‘Astonish me!’ was the celebrated demand that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev made of Jean Cocteau when he was devising Erik…
Reworking Dickens: Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed
Putting new wine into old wineskins is an increasingly popular fictional mode. Retellings of 19th-century novels abound. Jane Austen inevitably…
Sixteen cathedrals to see before you die
There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life…
Propaganda from the Russian Front: The People Immortal, by Vasily Grossman, reviewed
On its posthumous publication in 1980, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate was widely compared with War and Peace. For all…
A gay journey of self-discovery
Seán Hewitt, born in 1990, realised that he was gay at a very early age. ‘A kind, large woman’ who…
Michael Beloff QC drops names – but they’re not the ones we’re curious about
‘The law,’ according to W.S. Gilbert’s Lord Chancellor, ‘is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent’ and, by common consent,…
The making of a poet: Mother’s Boy, by Patrick Gale, reviewed
Charles Causley was a poet’s poet. Both Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin considered him the finest candidate for the laureateship,…
Man of mystery: Not Everybody Lives the Same Way, by Jean-Paul Dubois, reviewed
For Jean-Paul Dubois, as for Emily Dickinson, ‘March is the month of expectation’. A prolific writer, he limits his literary…
A scrapbook of sketches: James Ivory’s memoir is slipshod and inconsequential
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…
From ‘little Cockney’ to playing Queen Mary: the remarkable career of Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
The secret life of Thomas Mann: The Magician, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed
In a letter to Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, who had married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika sight unseen in order to…
The book as narrator: The Pages, by Hugo Hamilton, reviewed
It is a truism that a book needs readers in order to have a meaningful existence. Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages…
Brightest of the Bright Young People: the rich, rackety life of Cecil Beaton
In December 1979, the 28-year-old Hugo Vickers, dining with a friend, declared: ‘I see little point to life these days.’…
Celebrating Jesus’s female followers: Names of the Women, by Jeet Thayil, reviewed
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys…
