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It took two centuries to eradicate smallpox even after a vaccine was invented
In supposedly unprecedented times such as ours, there are compelling reasons to turn to the history of medicine. For hope,…
A tide of paranoid distrust: The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, by M. John Harrison, reviewed
Over the past 50 years, M. John Harrison has produced a remarkably varied body of work: a dozen atmospheric novels…
Demystifying freemasonry
The history of rubbish can be scholarship, but the history of scholarship is often rubbish. Hindsight diminishes earlier habits of…
Trump’s autocratic antics risk becoming the new normal
It is easy to forget the abnormality of Donald Trump’s presence in the White House. Before his election it would…
Part Beat, part hippy, part punk: the gay life of John Giorno
John Giorno, who died last year, was a natural acolyte: he needed a superior being to set him in motion.…
Poetic miniatures: A Lover’s Discourse, by Xiaolu Guo, reviewed
The novelist, memoirist and film-maker Xiaolu Guo writes with tremendous delicacy and nuance about migration, language, alienation, and love. A…
Madcap escapades: The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones, by Owen Booth, reviewed
The narrative of an adolescent travelling by water with an older companion, undergoing trials and ordeals, encountering scoundrels and villains,…
Stockholm syndrome: The Family Clause, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, reviewed
Some faint hearts may sink at the idea of a torrid Swedish family drama peopled with nameless figures identified only…
Italy’s Achilles heel: corruption and cronyism
Tim Parks is a seasoned, incisive observer of football, the railways, work, domestication and plenty more in his adoptive country…
‘I was frightened every single day’: the perils of guarding Stalin
In Russian, the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’ translates as ‘The less you know, the better you sleep’. For those who…
One man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure
All it takes to turn a cast-off into a prized possession can be a bit of imagination. To a passerby,…
The dark underbelly of New Orleans revealed by Hurricane Katrina
Home, as James Baldwin wrote, is perhaps ‘not a place but simply an irrevocable condition’. Sarah M. Broom’s National Book…
Killing time: the poetry of Keith Douglas
Keith Douglas is perhaps the best-known overlooked poet. He died following the D-Day landings in 1944, and his Collected Poems…
We all breathe – 25,000 times a day – so why aren’t we better at it?
Covid-19 has been bad news for writers with books coming out — unless the book is about breathing. We’re all…
The world’s largest, rarest owl is used for target practice in Siberia
The montane forests of far-eastern Russia have given rise to one of the finest nature books of recent years, The…
If you spent a day at Action Park you took your life in your hands
Before reading this book, the only thing I knew about Action Park was that it had lent its name to…
Oxford skulduggery: The Sandpit, by Nicholas Shakespeare, reviewed
Melancholy pervades this novel: a sense of glasses considerably more than half empty, with the levels sinking fast. This is…
Good memoir-writing should also be self-critical
A book about breaking confidences, not to mention friendships, rather begs the same in return. Reading Anne Applebaum’s brief memoir…
The sex life of the Monarch butterfly is positively wild
Wendy Williams is an enthusiast, and enthusiasm is infectious. Lepidoptery is for her a new fascination, and it shows. On…
Natalie Wood’s death remains a mystery
Are all children of famous parents told they must have a book in them? Since Allegra Huston’s wonderful memoir Love…
Sad and beautiful: The Dear Departed, by Brian Moore, reviewed
Short story writers often find it irksome to be asked when the novel is coming out, as though their work…
R.B. Haldane: a great public servant, much maligned
This is a strange but valuable book. The author is a private equity magnate, whose fascination for Richard Burdon Haldane…
His latest disturbing short stories show Richard Ford very much on song
Sorry For Your Trouble (Bloomsbury, £16.99), Richard Ford’s 13th book of fiction, shows a writer still very much on song.…
A power for good: the Sharp family were a model of vision and humanitarianism
Who would imagine that Johann Zoffany’s celebrated 1780 depiction of the extensive Sharp family happily making music on their pleasure…
False pretences: No-Signal Area, by Robert Perisic, reviewed
A journalist and poet based in Zagreb, Robert Perišic was in his early twenties when the socialist federal republic of…
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