More from Books
Are good people made by good surroundings, or the other way round?
Joad Raymond Wren examines utopian schemes through the centuries, from Plato’s Republic to Womyn’s land, and concludes that we should never stop challenging the status quo
The joy of chucking little wooden blocks around
Neil Squires delights in the Finnish game of Mölkky, whereby players aim to knock over 12 numbered wooden skittles using a single throwing pin
Dull, duller and Dulles – was Churchill’s jibe about America’s Cold War icon unfair?
John Foster Dulles was forever going on about ‘boldness’ and dynamic change, but his limitations of perspective and philosophy become glaringly obvious in this latest biography
Nagging doubts: Twenty Minutes of Silence, by Hélène Bessette, reviewed
In a luxurious French villa, a man lies dead, shot with his own gun – and his wife and son become suspects. But new information emerges every time the scene is reviewed
Chinese puzzle or matryoshka doll – the complexity of Sino-Russia relations
For centuries, the wary neighbours have been united mainly in their opposition to the West – but is there now a new dynamic between the global powers?
Hot and bothered: Trouble Was, by Charlotte Edwardes, reviewed
Tempers boil over when nine-year-old Frank, his mother and siblings go to stay with an aunt on Exmoor in the blistering summer of 1976
Blame the Enlightenment for species extinction
Even such a key figure as Adam Smith believed that we would reach economic fulfilment before turning to the ‘real problems’ of nature and human life
The imaginative genius behind the Great Exhibition
The revenue derived from the international fair of 1851 helped fund the V&A, the Natural History and Science Museums and many other ‘Albertopolis’ institutions
Who needs an Italian beach when we have our own lidos?
With the continent now unbearably hot, these magnificent temples of swimming are experiencing a welcome revival, says Tom Fort
The clear and present danger of exploring the Gulag
When his plan to ski hundreds of miles up the frozen River Lena fails, Charlie Walker grows increasingly alarmed by his hostile reception in Siberia
A trove of avian lore and history
In richly poetic prose, Robert Macfarlane evokes the ways and wiles of birds, from the ‘thinker’ razorbills of Newfoundland to ocean-crossing whooper swans
A grandmother’s twisted mind: The Passage of Roses, by Tie Ning, reviewed
An ambitious, controlling matriarch will do anything to curry favour during the Cultural Revolution – even to the extent of deliberately harming her vulnerable young granddaughter
There will be blood – the vital work of field transfusion units
Roderick Bailey pays tribute to the highly mobile, tight-knit detachments that revolutionised military medicine and saved thousands of soldiers’ lives in the second world war
No fairytale: The Children, by Melissa Albert, reviewed
What caused the devastating house fire that killed a bestselling children’s author, leaving her son and daughter – the stars of her books – suddenly orphaned?
Alien fever shows no signs of abating
As long as the US government refuses to disclose its voluminous UFO files, rumours will intensify about ‘a secret that people have been killed to preserve’
Vigilante justice: Pure Men, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, reviewed
The grotesque posthumous lynching of a homosexual by a frenzied mob prompts Sarr’s protagonist to investigate the shadow world of gay life in Senegal
Nothing works: The End of Everything, by John M. Harrison, reviewed
Set in ‘one of the well-known seasonal waterside art towns of Kent’, Harrison’s novel is both a bracing vision of environmental collapse and a post-Brexit cri de coeur
Tuscan escapades: Villa Coco, by Andrew Sean Greer, reviewed
An American archivist, hired to catalogue an elderly baronessa’s antiques, finds himself drawn into increasingly absurd adventures in the Italian countryside
Symbol of wisdom or harbinger of death – the owl preserves its mystery
The many legends of humans and gods taking owl form continue to give the ghostly nocturnal predator an indefinable allure
The agonies of an abandoned wife: Mrs Dickens, by Emily Howes, reviewed
Charles Dickens is cast as a cruel, coercive controller, accusing the mother of his ten children of idleness and stupidity before discarding her for a younger woman
The disgrace of Juan Carlos of Spain, a modern-day Don Juan
The once popular king was forced into exile in 2014 when rumours of profligacy, illegitimate children and ‘an unbridled sexual appetite’ finally caught up with him
The botched coup that presaged the end of the Soviet Union
In August 1991, Vladimir Kryuchkov, the head of the KGB, attempted to oust President Gorbachev. But the plot’s failure was guaranteed when the army refused to fire on protestors
In the dazzling company of Alexander Pope and friends
For three months in Twickenham in 1726, Pope and his guests John Gay and Jonathan Swift worked on their satirical masterpieces while entertaining each other with their repartee
Jaded and adrift: I Want You to Be Happy, by Jem Calder, reviewed
Two lonely residents of east London, well-matched in their attachment to idle dreams, make an awkward stab at a relationship
The banality of Hélène von Bismarck’s view of Britain is astounding
Philip Hensher 13 June 2026 9:00 am
The passionate EU supporter seems to scold Britain for taking a contrary path while barely acknowledging the rights and freedoms the British have long taken for granted