The game of life
In the introduction to his new book Steven Johnson starts out by describing the ninth-century Book of Ingenious Devices and…
A few good books
It is a truth universally acknowledged that whenever ITV or the BBC decides — the latter usually with charter renewal…
Smashing stuff
‘Joe lay in bed in his mother’s house. He thought about committing suicide. Such thinking was like a metronome for…
Cervantes the seer
William Egginton opens his book with a novelistic reimagining: here’s Miguel de Cervantes, a toothless old geezer of nearly 60,…
Diary
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
Diary
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
United Arab Emirates: Leaves in the desert
Who goes to the Sharjah International Book Fair? Sam Leith, for one
‘They pull a gun, you pull a hashtag’ – the ridiculous debate over what to call Isil
We should worry less about what to call Isis, and more about how to fight them
Theatre of politics
Sam Leith on the year 1606, when plague and panic were rife — and all the world really was a stage
1386 and all that
Sam Leith describes the frequently lonely, squalid and hapless life of the father of English poetry
When Hitler’s dream came true
In 1946, in the aftermath of a devastating war, the world seemed a very dark place indeed, says Sam Leith
High rises and dashed hopes
The only thing really swinging in early Sixties Britain, says Sam Leith, was the wrecking-ball
Translating Proust wasn’t all
Sam Leith is astonished by how much the multi-talented Charles Scott Moncrieff achieved in his short lifetime
The rhythm of life
Sam Leith finds much to like in a companion to musical films, and concludes that they matter very much – to the author anyway
The incredible journey
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
A guide to life
Adam Nicolson plunges into Homer’s epic poetry and finds it inexhaustible. Sam Leith feels a touch of envy
Biting back
Edward St Aubyn’s new novel is a jauntily malicious satire on literary prizes in general, the Man Booker Prize in…
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
‘Tell it not in the future’
Sam Leith finds the most sacred site of Ancient Greece still a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
A bold artistic vision
Sam Leith on the exasperating, charismatic painter who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee
Words, words, words
Sam Leith reviews the reviews of David Lodge — and wonders where it will all end
Aesthete and huckster
Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat
How to enrich your life
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
This other Eden
Sam Leith is transported by the finest scenery in England
Taking the rap
Since his suicide, David Foster Wallace has made the transition from major writer to major industry. Hence this UK issue…
