How much worse can it get?
The hero of many of Ford’s novels, Frank, now 74, is still trying to bond with his son Paul, who has been diagnosed with an incurable neurodegenerative condition
Was it murder?
In a beautifully told novel, O’Callaghan focuses on the mysterious death of the footballer Matthias Sindelar in 1939 – possibly as a result of defying Hitler
Is there intelligent life on other planets?: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, reviewed
We open with Theo, our narrator, and Robin, his son, looking at the night sky through a telescope. ‘Darkness this…
No one ‘got’ the Sixties better than David Bailey
What caught my eye towards the end of Look Again was this conversation between David Bailey and the shoe designer…
Living on a nuclear submarine does your head in
Richard Humphreys spent a good part of five years, between the ages of 18 and 23, living inside a nuclear…
How to interrogate a murderer
This is horrible. But it’s a book by Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, so it’s…
One hundred years on, could we cope with a new flu pandemic?
Do you remember the swine flu panic a decade ago? Jeremy Brown, the author of this book, describes it here.…
The pagan feast of Christmas
This book, an excellent history of Christmas, made me think of a Christmas cartoon strip I once saw in Viz…
A Shout in the Ruins, by Kevin Powers, reviewed
We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…
Is Tegucigalpa the crime capital of the world?
The Spanish journalist Alberto Arce worked for Associated Press in Honduras in 2012 and 2013. After a year, he says:…
A book about sleep that will keep you up all night
I’ve read several books about sleep recently, and their authors all tell me the same three things. The first is…
Manning up
Is this the best book I’ve ever read on the subject of masculinity? Maybe it is, I thought, the first…
Two dark tales
Just over halfway through this grim and gripping book, the author describes herself and her girlfriend ‘lying on my bed…
Cold comfort
All animals, Scott Carney tells us, seek comfort. But human beings are a bit different. We don’t need to spend…
His and her healthcare
When I started this book, I have to admit, I did not think it would be as absolutely fascinating as…
A good man at the 1970s BBC
When I saw this book, a biography of Huw Wheldon, who was managing director of BBC Television between 1968 and…
Hitting rock bottom in LA
The title of this book tells you a lot. Jack Sutherland, who grew up in London and Los Angeles, worked…
Warning: this book only contains strong language
Dan Marshall, the author of this memoir, loves to swear. ‘It’s very difficult for me to write a sentence without…
Sense and sensibility: what your fingertips tell your brain
I used to think we had five senses — sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. And I used to think…
Stuck at K: we know very little about vitamins except that they’re good for us (in small quantities)
Before I read this book about vitamins, I thought I knew what it would be like. It would be vaguely…
Your immune system’s war isn’t Saving Private Ryan — it’s Homeland
Before I read this book, I imagined the immune system as a defensive force, like the Germans on the beaches…
The hell of being Michael Palin
In these diaries, which I found excellent in a very specific way, Michael Palin tells us about his life between…
A book about human nature that makes your head spin – in a good way
Vincent Deary is a therapist, and this book is the first part of a trilogy. How We Are is about…
Having a moral compass just gets in the way of being smart
Steven D. Levitt was a Harvard economist who specialised in politics and spent a lot of time watching cop shows…
The thrill of cutting into a human brain
In the first sentence of the first chapter of this book, Henry Marsh, a consultant brain surgeon, says, ‘I often…
