More from Books
God is everywhere, sometimes in strange guises, in Jonathan Franzen’s Crossroads
Twenty years ago The Corrections alerted a troubled world to the talents of Jonathan Franzen. Though cruel and funny and…
Stylish and useful: why the Anglepoise remains a design classic
The tide of survival bias has retreated and left the Anglepoise a design classic. Its contemporaries from the mid-1930s, a…
Folk music is still very much alive and kicking
As a writer who obsesses over the right title to grab a target audience, seeing a book subtitled ‘Song Collectors…
Any beggar woman was a potential scapegoat during the European witch craze
In the three centuries between 1450 and 1750 in Europe it is estimated that up to 100,000 women were burned,…
Don’t ask a historian what history is
E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History? has cast a long shadow over the discipline. I recall being assigned to…
Under deep suspicion in Beirut, Kim Philby still carried on regardless
The story of the Cambridge spies has been served up so often that it has become stale — too detailed,…
Reassess every relationship you’ve ever had before it’s too late
‘Reading is a celebration of the mystery of ourselves,’ according to Elizabeth Strout, who writes to help readers understand themselves…
Colson Whitehead celebrates old Harlem in a hardboiled thriller that’s also a morality tale
For modern America, Harlem is a once maligned, now much vaunted literary totem, which continues to occupy a gargantuan place…
From ‘little Cockney’ to playing Queen Mary: the remarkable career of Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
Fiction’s most famous Rifleman returns — and it’s miraculous he’s still alive
It has been 15 years since the last Richard Sharpe novel, and it’s a pleasure to report that fiction’s most…
Beavers, not concrete barriers, can save Britain from floods
As the start date of COP26 draws closer, and just when we are assailed by daily proof of climate chaos,…
As feminists fall out, it’s not just the patriarchy that’s under fire
UK grassroots feminism is flourishing at the moment, with the journalist Julie Bindel leading from the front as troublemaker-in-chief. In…
The delicate business of monitoring the monarchy
This very readable account of relations between the British intelligence services and the Crown does more than it says on…
Spitfires of the sea: the secret exploits of the Royal Navy’s 15th Motor Gun Boat Flotilla
Fast boats and fast women have been the ruin of many a poor boy. But they can also prove a…
Only time will tell if there’ll be a Great Pandemic Novel
We had been dreading it like (forgive me) the plague: the inevitable onslaught of corona-lit. Fortunately, the first few titles…
The country house is dead: that’s why we love it so
The true English disease is Downton Syndrome. Symptoms include a yearning for a past of chivalry, grandeur and unambiguously stratified…
How 19th-century gold rushes led to a distrust of China
For a brief moment three summers ago it seemed that the clear Idaho air wafting through the Sun Valley Literary…
How does David Sedaris get away with saying the unsayable?
These aren’t diaries in the sense that Chips Channon kept diaries, or Samuel Pepys. They aren’t diaries at all, beyond…
Unkindly light: The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle sequence is one of this century’s great projects: an intimate epic in which the overriding…
Mind games: the blurred line between fact and fiction
Readers of Case Study unfamiliar with its author’s previous work might believe they have stumbled on a great psychotherapy scandal.…
Paradise and paradox: an inner pilgrimage into John Milton
When E. Nesbit published Wet Magic in 1913 (a charming novel in which the children encounter a mermaid), she took…
Wrapped up in satire, a serious lesson about the fine line between success and scandal
Have you heard of champing? Neither had I. Turns out it’s camping in a field beside a deserted church. When…
A 21st-century Holden Caulfield: The Book of Form and Emptiness, by Ruth Ozecki, reviewed
The world Ruth Ozeki creates in The Book of Form & Emptiness resembles one of the snow globes that pop…
The coal mining conundrum: why did the NUM fight so hard for its members’ right to suffer underground?
Anyone with a grasp of the history of Britain knows that its once considerable power, and much of its still…
Flight into danger: Freight Dogs, by Giles Foden, reviewed
Flying has always attracted chancers and characters to Africa. Wilbur Smith’s father so loved aviation he named his son to…
