More from Books
What the Russians thought of James Bond in the 1960s
Last year I wrote a piece about James Bond for the ‘Freelance’ column of the Times Literary Supplement. All true…
Don’t be seduced by fake truffle oil this Christmas
Truffles smell of sex. Even if we can’t quite say what we mean by ‘smell’ or ‘sex’ in this sentence,…
Why America’s attitude to mental illness is dangerously deluded
A friend who works in social care speaks to me earnestly about a troubled young colleague: ‘Of course, she’s got…
Jan Morris’s last book is a vade mecum to treasure
Jan Morris, in all her incarnations, was always able to evoke a place and a moment like no other. As…
Spot the book title 2021
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All successful spies need to be good actors
On 2 October last year, when he became chief of the UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6, if you prefer), Richard…
Dancing on Terence Conran’s grave
‘Who,’ asks Stephen Bayley, in one of the ‘S.B’ chapters of this irresistibly spiky co-written book, ‘could countenance working for…
How to tell your Roman emperors apart
Rising professors do well to be controversial if they wish to be invited to contribute to mainstream media. But the…
A keepsake – and to-do list – of Europe’s greatest cathedrals
In his new book on Europe’s cathedrals, Simon Jenkins begins with the claim that the greatest among them are our…
The real surprise contained in a Kinder Surprise Egg
The Rosetta Stone has an awful lot in common with a Kinder Surprise Egg. Hear me out. The actual text…
Children’s books for all ages: the best of 2021
She’s done it again: J.K. Rowling has written a captivating children’s book. The Christmas Pig(Little Brown, £20) is about a…
A book trade romp: Sour Grapes, by Dan Rhodes, reviewed
Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…
Has nostalgia become the Greeks’ national disease?
Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…
The 17th-century Huron chief Kondiaronk can still teach us valuable lessons
Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…
Lost in the fog: The Fell, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
Novelists are leery about letting the buzzwords of recent history into their books. The immediate past threatens to upstage the…
Richard Needham takes a businesslike attitude to the Troubles
This memoir from Sir Richard Needham, 6th Earl of Kilmorey, businessman and former Northern Ireland minister, has a frank opening:…
Father Christmas battles through the Blitz
When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December…
Culture clash: Things We Don’t Tell the People We Love, by Huma Qureshi, reviewed
Apart from what the title tells us, these stories are about a fundamental difference in cultures. Huma Qureshi writes like…
Suspicious circumstances abound in the latest crime fiction
The old adage that everyone has a novel in them has a new version: anyone can write a thriller. Celebrity…
Who’s to blame if Britney Spears has been ‘devoured’ by celebrity?
All the questions around Britney Spears can be condensed into this one: who should we blame? For a long time,…
What I really said to Gordon Brown: Field Marshal Lord Guthrie sets the record straight
A headline in the Mail on Sunday, taken up eagerly by the BBC’s Todayprogramme, claimed recently: ‘The SAS is getting…
Glasnost merely confirmed Russia’s deep-seated suspicion of democracy
Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…
A scrapbook of sketches: James Ivory’s memoir is slipshod and inconsequential
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…
Compassion and a gift for friendship are touchingly evident in Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days
It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown — how Tom Hanks’s assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing…
There is nothing cosy about Penelope Lively
At one time, Penelope Lively was routinely shortchanged by critics. Her protagonists are often middle-class professionals — historians, archeologists, scriptwriters…
