Public libraries deserve to shut – they’ve forgotten why they exist
The usual piece about public libraries runs like this. Public libraries are for ‘more than just books’. They are in…
‘Too bohemian for Bournemouth’: the young Lawrence Durrell
Begged by his mother to go somewhere his behaviour wouldn’t ‘show so much’, the future novelist, aged 19, embarked on a lifetime of travel and rarely visited Britain again
A.C. Benson enters the pantheon of great English diarists
The intimate of writers, politicians and royalty, Benson confined his waspish anecdotes to journals kept over a period of 40 years, now available in a magnificent two-volume edition
Spare us from ‘experimental’ novels
Some sorts of books and dramas have very strict rules. We like a lot of things to be absolutely predictable.…
What Mark Twain owed to Charles Dickens
It wasn’t just Dickens’s stage performances and publishing ventures that fascinated Twain, but the witty, journalistic style, which he mimicked to great effect in early travel books
Studying Dickens at university was once considered demeaning. Now it’s too demanding
Accessible, ‘relevant’ short stories are increasingly replacing the classics, as the monuments of Victorian literature defeat today’s undergraduates
Whether adored or despised, Princess Diana is never forgotten
Edward White examines the effect of the former Princess of Wales on the millions worldwide who never even laid eyes on her
Why the Japanese flock to Battersea Park
They weren’t familiar park visitors, but a couple with a specific purpose, laden down with camera equipment. They unpacked carefully,…
A novel in disguise: Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser, reviewed
De Kretser’s witty, innovative take on the immigrant’s predicament tries ingeniously to persuade us that we are not reading fiction but documentary truth
The pointlessness of the German Peasants’ War – except in Marxist ideology
The short-lived 16th-century revolt resolved absolutely nothing, but it loomed large in Engels’s thought and in the official DDR interpretation of history
The beauty and tedium of the works of Adalbert Stifter
The 19th-century Austrian was an astonishingly pure stylist, as W.G. Sebald acknowledges – but it takes real dedication to craft to write such boring novels
Once upon a time in Germany: the Grimms’ legacy of revenge and gory redemption
The Household Tales only attained their standing after the brothers’ death, with the unification of Germany and the decades of nationalism that led to catastrophe
The joy of the Turkish barber
Just as you always hope will happen, I knew I had met the man of my dreams almost on sight.…
Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty
Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all
The joy of weight loss
It was a few months ago. I was coming back from my morning walk with Greta in Battersea Park, so…
The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain
The tabloids in particular stirred up fear and distrust with lurid stories of orgies, prostitution, drug-taking, political corruption, sinister concealment and susceptibility to blackmail
The trivial details about royalty are what really fascinate us
Craig Brown’s focus on specifics that other biographers would consider beneath them brings rich rewards
The dark side of your local dog show
Over at the judging for Waggiest Tail, things were getting acrimonious. ‘That bloody woman,’ my new acquaintance muttered. We were…
Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn
Even the most liberal-minded reader might be surprised by the amount of crack cocaine, LSD, alcohol and casual sex the poet indulged over the course of 50 years
The clue to Shakespeare’s sexuality lies in the sonnets
They are quite unlike any other sonnet sequence of the time and seem to be a kind of personal statement – written by a man with undeniable feelings for another man
The art of talking to strangers
About halfway round the park, by the last spindly remnants of the Festival of Britain, I bumped into my Scandinavian…
My vote winner? Banning ‘fun’ runs
One of us must once have told a political pollster: ‘I really have no idea at all who I’m going…
Exploring the glorious literary heritage of Bengal
Bengalis are renowned for their love of discussion and argument, and a new collection of short stories reflects this passion for cultured conversation
The Berkeley scandal of 1681 transfixed London society – and Aphra Behn soon capitalised on it
In The Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister, often called the ‘first English novel’, Behn successfully milked the affair for all it was worth
What’s really behind the Tories’ present woes?
Philip Hensher 25 May 2024 9:00 am
Geoffrey Wheatcroft identifies two root causes: the disastrous revision of the leadership election procedure, and David Cameron’s turn to the referendum as a device to govern