Books
It was Bevin, not Bevan, who was the real national treasure
Alan Johnson pays tribute to Ernest Bevin, a towering political figure too often forgotten
Monuments to the second world war are looking increasingly dodgy
Most monuments are literally set in stone — or cast in bronze to better survive the weather. Being enduring, they…
Let’s swap murders: Amanda Craig’s The Golden Rule reviewed
It has been three years since Amanda Craig’s previous novel, The Lie of the Land, the story of a foundering…
Imperialism is far from over, but gathering force in disguise
From ancient times, empires have risen and fallen, driven by war, territorial acquisition, trade, plunder, religion, ideology, technology, culture and…
Foreign fields: Boyd Tonkin chooses his favourite shorter classics in translation
If I had a rouble or a euro for every reader who fulfilled their lockdown promise to devour Dostoevsky, Tolstoy…
The attraction of repulsion: The Disaster Tourist, by Yun-Ko Eun, reviewed
Disaster tourism allows people to explore places in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters. Sites of massacres and concentration…
Lives of luxury for Sparta’s women
History is full of ‘ifs’ and the Spartan story fuller than most. If the 300 had not made their famous…
Finder and keeper: two family memoirs reviewed
What can we ever know about our family’s past? How do we love those closest to us when doing so…
How time vanishes: the more we study it, the more protean it seems
Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…
A scandalous cover-up: the El Bordo mining tragedy of 1920
On the morning of 10 March 1920, on the edge of the city of Pachuca in central Mexico, 87 miners…
How do we greet one another today?
Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right
Piracy pays: how history’s greatest buccaneer got off scot-free
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
The greatest ‘if only’ of modern history... that the Weimar Republic had succeeded
Has it ever occurred to you that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 might have won us the war? Until…
Good biographers make the best companions
Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…
Keeping poker-faced is no use – it’s the hands that give the game away
This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…
A panoramic novel of modern Britain: The Blind Light, by Stuart Evers, reviewed
A decade ago — eheu fugaces labuntur anni — Stuart Evers’s debut story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking, was one…
From bashful teenager to supermodel: Susanna Moore’s fairytale memoir
There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…
Chilli con carnage: the red hot pepper and communism
These days it is as hard to imagine Sichuanese food without chillies as it is to imagine Italian food without…
Splashing the cash at VIP nightclubs is now the favourite recreation of the rich
The spectacular extravagance of the VIP nightclub ‘experience’ could be the last bonfire of the vanities, says Lynn Barber
Why Niki Lauda was considered the bravest man in sport
Formula One motor racing is the perennial, worldwide contest that most reliably gratifies hero-worshipping, power-worshipping, money-worshipping, technology-worshipping ghouls, and some…
Young female Irish writers are setting a new trend in fiction
Publishers everywhere are looking for the new Sally Rooney, which is odd since as far as I know the old…
A Chaucerian tale: Pilgrims, by Matthew Kneale, reviewed
Matthew Kneale is much drawn to people of the past. In his award-winning English Passengers, he captured the sensibilities of…
Children should get out more — even if it’s for hide and seek in the park
We live in an urban world. It’s a statistical fact. The great outdoors for most of us is a thing…
A choice of classic crime fiction
A guide to reading in lockdown. My involvement with crime and mystery fiction started when I was four. The first…
The hazards of attending a queen
When Queen Alexandra chose her ladies in waiting she prudently surrounded herself with elderly and plainish ones, who did not…
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