William Leith

How much worse can it get?

8 July 2023 9:00 am

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?

20 May 2023 9:00 am

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

18 September 2021 9:00 am

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

5 December 2020 9:00 am

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

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Richard Humphreys spent a good part of five years, between the ages of 18 and 23, living inside a nuclear…

Lloyd Welch, the Lyon girls’ murderer.

How to interrogate a murderer

3 August 2019 9:00 am

This is horrible. But it’s a book by Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, so it’s…

Warehouses were converted in 1918 to keep patients suffering from the flu pandemic in quarantine. Credit: Getty Images

One hundred years on, could we cope with a new flu pandemic?

26 January 2019 9:00 am

Do you remember the swine flu panic a decade ago? Jeremy Brown, the author of this book, describes it here.…

‘Decorating for Christmas’ by Alfred W. Cooper (1854)

The pagan feast of Christmas

15 December 2018 9:00 am

This book, an excellent history of Christmas, made me think of a Christmas cartoon strip I once saw in Viz…

An agent from the Freedman’s Bureau separates freed slaves from an angry mob at the end of the American civil war. Credit Getty Images

A Shout in the Ruins, by Kevin Powers, reviewed

23 June 2018 9:00 am

We’re in Virginia, in the 1850s. A girl called Emily is tormenting her dog, Champion, and her father’s teenage slave,…

A nightly occurrence in Tegucigalpa. Forensic officers inspect a crime scene involving the execution of six men in drug-related gang warfare

Is Tegucigalpa the crime capital of the world?

24 February 2018 9:00 am

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

4 November 2017 9:00 am

I’ve read several books​ ​about​ ​sleep recently,​ ​and​ ​their​ ​authors​ ​all​ ​tell​ ​me​ ​the same​ ​three​ ​things.​ ​The​ ​first​ ​is​…

Manning up

26 August 2017 9:00 am

Is this the best book I’ve ever read on the subject of masculinity? Maybe it is, I thought, the first…

Two dark tales

1 July 2017 9:00 am

Just over halfway through this grim and gripping book, the author describes herself and her girlfriend ‘lying on my bed…

Cold comfort

27 May 2017 9:00 am

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

15 October 2016 9:00 am

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

4 June 2016 9:00 am

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

19 March 2016 9:00 am

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

7 November 2015 9:00 am

Dan Marshall, the author of this memoir, loves to swear. ‘It’s very difficult for me to write a sentence without…

Why do footballers hug each other when a goal is scored? It’s all to do with grooming

Sense and sensibility: what your fingertips tell your brain

11 April 2015 9:00 am

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)

21 March 2015 9:00 am

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

6 December 2014 9:00 am

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

4 October 2014 9:00 am

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

6 September 2014 9:00 am

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

28 June 2014 9:00 am

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

22 March 2014 9:00 am

In the first sentence of the first chapter of this book, Henry Marsh, a consultant brain surgeon, says, ‘I often…