Books

The shame of being an alcoholic mother

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Julia Hamilton and her daughter Arabella Byrne share their experiences of an addiction that seemed ‘baked into them like a curse’, and the special stigma they felt attached to them

The agonies of adolescence: The Party, by Tessa Hadley, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

In post-war Bristol, two sisters fall in with a group of arrogant young men and soon feel themselves painfully inferior

‘Life was good, very good, almost too good’ – Wallis Simpson’s year in China

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Arriving in Shanghai in the summer of 1924, the elegant 28-year-old embarked on a busy but harmless life of pleasure which would later be cast as a wild debauch

Kate Bush – always quite hippy, dippy, ‘out there’

9 November 2024 9:00 am

With Bush, the unexpected is about the only certainty, having the bravado to do what she wants rather than pandering to the public’s longing for hits

‘If you steal this book I’ll beat your brains out’

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Curses on the book thief from Latin and Old English sources range from the venomous to the sadistic to the mind-twistingly gruesome

Stalemate over Taiwan is the best we can hope for

9 November 2024 9:00 am

A good outcome is the tacit recognition on all sides that we currently lack the means to solve this intractable problem, says the former diplomat Kerry Brown

Playing Monopoly is not such a trivial pursuit

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Games are politics you can touch, says Tim Clare, and a well-designed boardgame can provide a critical experience of society’s systems

The spy who came back from retirement: Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Given a new lease of life by John le Carré’s son, George Smiley gets embroiled in a murky affair involving the Circus’s key Stasi asset and a missing Hungarian literary agent

Saint Joan and saucy Eve: a single woman split in two

9 November 2024 9:00 am

The relationship between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz is memorably captured in Lily Anolik’s red-hot, propulsive portrait of two warring writers who were once close friends

Were the Arctic convoy sacrifices worth it?

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Stalin privately admitted that his army could never have triumphed without western aid, and the convoys also indirectly helped the war in the Atlantic – but the loss of life was horrendous

Doppelgangers galore: The Novices of Lerna, by Angel Bonomini, reviewed

9 November 2024 9:00 am

A graduate from Argentina, offered a six-month fellowship in Switzerland, is appalled to meet – and have to live with - 24 versions of himself

Reliving the terror of the Bataclan massacre

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Emmanuel Carrère knows when to let the horrors speak for themselves in his moving, hard-hitting account of the trial of the perpetrators

Turkish delights: the best of the year’s cookbooks

9 November 2024 9:00 am

The vegetarian treats Ozlem Warren offers us from her Turkish kitchen might inspire a bulk-buy of filo pastry. Other recipes from Nigel Slater, Ben Shewry and Jess Elliott Dennison

Freedom fighters of the ‘forgotten continent’

9 November 2024 9:00 am

A history of South America’s native heroes includes the Peruvian rebel Tupac Amaro II, the Mapuche of Chile, the escaped slaves of north-eastern Brazil and the ‘great liberator’ Simon Bolivar

Books of the Year II

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Contributors include: Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Stephen Bayley, Justin Marozzi, Andrea Wulf, Hilary Spurling, Boyd Tonkin and Graham Robb

Books of the Year I

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Our regular reviewers choose the books they have most enjoyed reading in 2024

From public bar to cocktail bar: books for the discerning drinker

2 November 2024 9:00 am

There’s something for all tastes this year, whether poetic meditations on the pub, advice on wines for extended cellaring or recipes for new-wave martinis

Waifs and strays: Gliff, by Ali Smith, reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Two lonely, recalcitrant children, Briar and Rose, find themselves among a bunch of other rag-tag misfits resisting ‘re-education’ by the brutal regime in power

The mystery of Area X: Absolution, by Jeff VanderMeer, reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

We are never told the exact location of this highly toxic zone in Florida, but any scientist investigating it has been monstrously affected, either physically or mentally

Truly inspirational: the hospital diary of Hanif Kureishi

2 November 2024 9:00 am

‘My world has been smashed...and there is nothing I can do about’, writes Kureishi of the freak accident in 2022 that has left him paralysed. ‘But I will not go under. I will make something of it’

The many passions of Ronald Blythe

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Some he kept hidden, such as his affairs with soldiers in the second world war, but his love of nature, literature, naked sunbathing and moonlit bicycling are all well-attested

Out of the depths: Dante’s Purgatorio, by Philip Terry, reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Having toured the infernal campus of the University of Essex, Terry arrives at the coast, to be confronted by a strange artificial mountain which he now must climb

You didn’t mess with them – the doughty matriarchs of the intelligence world

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Claire Hubbard-Hall pays tribute to the legions of women who devoted their lives to the British secret service but whose efforts went largely unacknowledged

A geriatric Lord of the Flies: Killing Time, by Alan Bennett, reviewed

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Chaos reigns at an old people’s home when Covid strikes, but the more rebellious residents won’t take the situation lying down

All human life – and death – is here: the British parish church

2 November 2024 9:00 am

As a skilled stonemason, Andrew Ziminski has dug deep into the fabric of countless churches and can explain every conceivable aspect, from baptismal fonts to gravestones