More from Books
Sixteen cathedrals to see before you die
There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life…
In praise of Birmingham, Britain’s maligned second city
During my gap year in 1981, I worked on the 24th floor of Birmingham’s Alpha Tower for the Regional Manpower…
The visionary genius of Harold Wilson
‘Our generation owes an apology to the shades of Harold Wilson,’ the polling guru Peter Kellner once told me. Had…
A lost brother: My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is, by Paul Stanbridge, reviewed
Grief leads us down some strange roads. Few, though, can be as peculiar as those charted by Paul Stanbridge in…
Nazi on the run: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, by Olivier Guez, reviewed
Who would have thought that someone would write a novel about Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz doctor and infamous experimenter on…
How to snare your reader: the secret of a good blurb
It sounds disingenuous, not to say dis-respectful, but as a writer of 40 books, give or take, I never read…
The short-lived wonder of Creedence Clearwater Revival
Million-selling rock bands are rarely happy families. They are an uneasy combination of a creative alliance and a business partnership,…
Murder most foul: The Marriage Portrait, by Maggie O’Farrell, reviewed
There’s a moment near the end of Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘My Last Duchess’ when it becomes clear that the…
In the footsteps of the Romantic poets
Shelley, walking as a boy through his ‘starlight wood’, looking for ghosts and filled with ‘hopes of high talk with…
Courage on the high seas
The Shetland Islands and the Faroes may seem to be somewhere out there in distant waters, marginal and in the…
Aleister Crowley was even more beastly than we’d imagined
I have never had much time for Aleister Crowley. Magic(k) is nonsense; the mystical societies he founded were simply pretexts…
Cosy crime flourishes in the pick of the summer’s thrillers
Cosy crime was once the literary world’s guilty secret, a refuge for any reader seeking entirely unchallenging entertainment – like…
The diary of a tortured man: Deceit, by Yuri Felsen, reviewed
Yuri Felsen, born in St Petersburg, was an exile in Riga, Berlin and Paris and died at Auschwitz in 1943.…
Rocked by rebellion: the short, unhappy reign of Edward VI
As Tory writers reflected on the safe passage of the Stuart dynasty through the Exclusion Crisis of 1679-81, an anonymous…
Joy, fear and regret in contemporary Britain
For two and a half years, as Britain adjusted from normality to the most disorienting collective trauma of our lifetimes,…
Harpo Marx – genius, idiot savant or lovable overgrown child?
It’s hard (if not impossible) to imagine a world worth living in that doesn’t include the Marx Brothers; and equally…
In search of the peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus
Publishers lately seem to have got the idea that otherwise uncommercial subjects might be rendered sexy if presented with a…
An angry poltergeist: Long Shadows, by Abigail Cutter, reviewed
Long Shadows, a powerful novel set mainly in the American civil war, is very unlike Gone with the Wind. The…
Why was Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s beautiful wife, so reviled?
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
Adrift in Berlin: Sojourn, by Amit Chaudhuri, reviewed
Feelings of dislocation are at the heart of Amit Chaudhuri’s award-winning novels. Friend of My Youth (2017) followed a writer’s…
A shaggy drug story: Industry of Magic & Light, by David Keenan, reviewed
The Scottish writer David Keenan has published five novels in five years: This is Memorial Device (2017), For the Good…
Seize the moment: Undercurrent, by Barney Norris, reviewed
Barney Norris’s third novel opens with a wedding in April. The couple tying the knot don’t matter; it’s the occasion…
How the travel industry convinced us we needed holidays
In September 2019, Thomas Cook filed for compulsory liquidation, leaving 600,000 customers stranded abroad. It was a sorry end to…
The bizarre history of London’s private members’ clubs
At the height of the IRA’s terrorist campaign on mainland Britain in December 1974, a bomb was lobbed through the…
Propaganda from the Russian Front: The People Immortal, by Vasily Grossman, reviewed
On its posthumous publication in 1980, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate was widely compared with War and Peace. For all…
