More from Books
Worth doing badly
The greatest pain of lockdown has been, for me, the absence of am-dram. In one half of my life I’m…
Nothing special, nothing new
I have a book of essays from 1986 by a group of British and American scholars called The Special Relationship.…
Into the labyrinth
Susanna Clarke is a member of the elite group of authors who don’t write enough. In 2004, the bestselling debut…
Magpie gifts
One day a baby bird falls from its nest into an oily scrapyard in Bermondsey, south London and seems unlikely…
What sort of family is this?
The line between obsession and addiction is as thin as rolling paper. Neither are simple and both stem from absence,…
One of the boys
This book made me almost weep with nostalgia, but heaven knows what today’s snowflakes will make of it. Fleet Street…
The pros and cons of consensus
The British romance with Germany has always been an on-off affair. At the turn of the century, Kaiser Bill enjoyed…
Return of the native
Conservationists are frequently criticised for focusing on glamorous species at the expense of others equally important but unluckily uglier —…
The skeleton is key
One hot summer’s morning, as a nine-year-old girl living on the rim of a Scottish loch in the hotel owned…
Under the jackboot
‘Free Tibet!’ used to be a rallying cry for Hollywood A-listers and rock stars. Richard Gere hung out with the…
Drowning in tears
Never was a monarch so undone by water as Henry I. A fruit of the sea killed him in 1135:…
Capital entertainment
The West End was always something a little apart. Some years ago, I used to go drinking with a man…
Searching for solace
Rose Tremain has followed her masterly The Gustav Sonata with an altogether different novel. In 1865, Clorinda Morrissey, a 38-year-old…
The magic of mushrooms
The biologist Merlin Sheldrake is an intriguing character. In a video promoting the publication of his book Entangled Life, which…
A rising star
It’s easy to forget that John F. Kennedy lived such a short life. At 43, he was the second youngest…
Our lopsided society
It is often said that the left does not understand human nature. Yet it is difficult to think of anything…
Primal longing
Sophie Macintosh’s Blue Ticket is not classic feminist dystopia. Yes, it is concerned with legislated fertility, a world where women’s…
Not so brutish
When I studied anthropology back in the early 1980s, Neanderthals were still largely the bulk-browed brutes of yore, grunting in…
Pirate principality
In 2012, the editors of Vice ran an article aimed at would-be contributors to their self-avowedly edgy magazine headed ‘Never…
Epic of gossip
Staying with Peregrine Eliot (later 10th Earl of St Germans) at Port Eliot in Cornwall, Lucian Freud remembered that the…
Forlorn hope
Parents are always terrified of bad family history repeating itself. Prince Albert dreaded his son Bertie turning into a roué…
Fools and fraudsters
In Money for Nothing, Thomas Levenson brings us into the story of the South Sea Bubble by writing about the…
All things to all men
Britain’s two most famous legendary figures, King Arthur and Robin Hood, remain enduringly and endearingly elusive, and thus ever-fascinating: Arthur…
Going quietly mad
Like Ottessa Moshfegh’s first novel Eileen (2015), Death in Her Hands plays with the conventions of noir. Vesta Gul, a…
Waves of unrest
In 1798, Tipu Sultan of Mysore sent an embassy to Mauritius. At home, he had fought the British and seen…
