More from Books
The Battle of Cross Street: High and Low, by Amanda Craig, reviewed
A group of writers in north London find themselves under siege in the local café as race riots erupt in a divided neighbourhood
The wonder of Nature’s ability to heal itself
Even with minor initiatives such a reforestation and accessing lost water resources we can help Nature rebalance and avoid environmental catastrophe, says Thomas Crowther
Portrait of an addict: Keshed, by Stu Hennigan, reviewed
Hennigan’s doomed protagonist Sean surveys the wreckage of his past life as he drinks himself into oblivion
Reading between the lines: the power of the unsaid
Kate McLoughlin explores the various silences in English literature – of rapture, intimacy, failure, avoidance and inarticulable grief
Caroline Aherne’s comedic genius is much missed
No one today can unmask pomposity and self-obsession as devastatingly as Aherne did in the guise of the faux-naive Mrs Merton
How the 18th-century Panopticon inspired today’s giant distribution hubs
The Bentham brothers’ invention is strikingly reflected in the ‘precisely engineered system of surveillance and optimisation’ at Amazon’s ‘exploitative’ fulfilment centres, says Henry Snow
Witty, lyrical and abstract: the art of Kurt Schwitters
The German Dadaist developed his own brand of anti-rational art, transforming the junk of everyday life into vivid collages
A family affair: Love Lane, by Patrick Gale, reviewed
Banished to the Canadian Prairies, Harry Cane lives on the land alone, except for secret nightly visits from his long-term lover and brother-in-law, Paul
The vexed relationship of Winston Churchill and George V
The King found his minister ‘very socialistic’, and was especially outraged when Churchill, on moving to the Admiralty in 1911, suggested calling a ship HMS Oliver Cromwell
Why should it be shameful to study the Classics?
Mary Beard offers an intelligent defence of the time-honoured subject amid calls to denounce it as a tool of racism, fascism or imperialism
The indomitable spirit of the Wigmore Hall
Over more than a century the concert venue has hosted royalty and refugees, broken taboos, reinforced traditions and kept its doors open through two world wars and a global pandemic
Another heroic freethinker is wiped from Russian history
Vera Gedroits, the world’s first woman professor of surgery, inevitably fell foul of Stalin, despite supporting workers’ rights and saving hundreds of lives in the Russo-Japanese war
Macbeth in Swahili? There might even be improvements
In his invigorating book on Shakespeare in translation, Daniel Hahn explains how in certain languages entire Shakespearean phrases can be rolled into a single word
The punishing gluttony of Georgian high living
Even in the grandest country houses guests were expected to eat and drink to excess, on chairs covered in wipe-clean leather and with chamber pots handy
Highland noir: The Grey Coast; The Serpent; Blood Hunt, by Neil M. Gunn, reviewed
The Clearances underlie Gunn’s vision like a skull beneath the moorland’s skin in the haunting historical novels he is best remembered for
A weary trek in the steps of Garibaldi and his Redshirts
Tim Parks and his wife struggle over scrub and scree in Sicily following the march of the Thousand in May 1860
It’s grim up north: Malc’s Boy, by Shaun Wilson, reviewed
In this work of autofiction, shocking violence is meted out to a small boy by his father in Wigton - leaving one wondering how the two are getting along these days
What does it say about Britain that the Palace of Westminster is crumbling?
Jan-Werner Müller explores the ways in which both politicians and the electorate are conditioned by their built democratic environment
How Rupert Murdoch destroyed the innocent enjoyment of watching sport
Since the emergence of Sky Bet in 2001, the ‘casinofication’ of sport has ensured that innumerable ‘micro-events’, along with major fixtures, are now firmly in the grip of gambling
The global revolution sparked by a vegetarian schoolteacher in Helsinki
After Hilda Kakikoski and 18 other women were elected to the Finnish parliament in 1907, female politicians emerged worldwide to challenge the patriarchy
Stay within the lines to realise your full creative energy
Narrow boundaries can lead to focus and innovation, argues David Epstein, whereas total freedom can be paralysing and result, paradoxically, in conformity
Was Marcel Duchamp’s notorious ‘Fountain’ even his own work?
The ‘readymade’ sculpture, signed R. Mutt, may have been the brainchild of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and only claimed by Duchamp after her death
The tragedy of Sir Walter Ralegh’s impossible quest
After the accession of James I, the life of the ‘ultimate Renaissance man’ depended entirely on his discovery of a mythical ‘city of gold’
Love and loneliness in the Outer Hebrides: John of John, by Douglas Stuart, reviewed
Summoned home to his dying grandmother in Harris, a gay young man is treated with both violence and tenderness by his father, a Calvinist precentor with a guilty secret
Were the lies we told to combat communism so shameful?
Part of the disinformation strategy of the IRD, a secretive postwar subsection of the Foreign Office, was to counter the blizzard of propaganda issuing from Moscow and Beijing
