More from Books
China and the WHO are given an easy ride in the Covid blame game
Are you ready to relive 2020? That’s what Adam Tooze is offering as he tells the story of Covid-19 through…
The first patrons of Modernism deserve much sympathy and respect
If Modernism is a jungle, how do you navigate a path through its thickets? Some explorers — Peter Gay and…
T.S. Eliot’s preoccupations in wartime Britain
In her essay ‘A House of One’s Own’, about Vanessa Bell, Janet Malcolm says memorably that Bloomsbury is a fiction,…
Thoroughly modern Marie: Matrix, by Lauren Groff, reviewed
It is 1158. A 17-year-old girl, born of both rape and royal blood, is cast out of the French court…
The war that changed the world in the early seventh century
It was not a war to end all wars, writes James Howard-Johnston at the start of this illuminating and thought-provoking…
Only Iain Sinclair could glimpse Hackney in the wilds of Peru
It seemed like a preposterous proposition. For decades, Iain Sinclair has been an assiduous psychogeographer of London, an eldritch cartographer…
How China’s economic revolution created billionaires overnight
In the winter of 1992, the retired octogenarian Deng Xiaoping toured China’s southern coasts. From there he gave a spirited…
No Samuel Beckett play is set in stone
It must have been shortly after my first performance of Not I in London in 2005 when Matthew Evans, the…
The secret life of Thomas Mann: The Magician, by Colm Tóibín, reviewed
In a letter to Stephen Spender, W.H. Auden, who had married Thomas Mann’s daughter Erika sight unseen in order to…
Is there intelligent life on other planets?: Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, reviewed
We open with Theo, our narrator, and Robin, his son, looking at the night sky through a telescope. ‘Darkness this…
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was lucky to escape retribution in 1945
They rather like bad boys, the French. Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) is one, in a tradition that stretches from François Villon…
James Bond and the Beatles herald a new Britain
The word ‘magisterial’ consistently attaches itself to the work of David Kynaston. His eye-wateringly exhaustive four-volume history of the Old…
All great fun: Mary Churchill dances through the war
The famous photographic portrait by Karsh of Winston Churchill as wartime prime minster personifies heroic defiance and grim determination. His…
Chips Channon’s judgment was abysmal, but the diaries are a great work of literature
It is often said that the best political diaries are written by those who dwell in the foothills of power.…
Irish quartet: Beautiful World, Where Are You?, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
The millennial generation of Irish novelists lays great store by loving relationships. One of the encomia on the cover of…
Ahmad Shah Massoud was Afghanistan’s best hope
Ahmed Shah Massoud was described as ‘the Afghan who won the Cold War’. While famous in France (he was educated…
America sees red: how fury prompted the slide into Trumpism
After leaving college more than two decades ago, Evan Osnos landed a job on the Exponent Telegram, one of two…
Lost to addiction: Loved and Missed, by Susie Boyt, reviewed
Ruth, the narrator of Susie Boyt’s seventh novel, is both the child of a single mother and a single mother…
Barça’s golden age and its ruling triumvirate
Even against our better judgment we tend to imbue our sporting heroes with characteristics they may not possess. This can…
A mighty river with many names: adventures on the Amur
The Amur is the eighth or tenth longest river in the world, depending on whom you believe. The veteran travel…
The view from the Paris bus — an appreciation of everyday life
Many would say the commute was one thing they didn’t miss in lockdown. But when Lauren Elkin was ‘yanked out…
A race against time: A Calling for Charlie Barnes, by Joshua Ferris, reviewed
What is life if not a quest to find one’s calling while massaging the narrative along the way? This question…
A story of women and weaving – a new retelling of the Greek myths
What are myths for? Do they lend meaning and value to this quintessence of dust? Like religion, perhaps they help…
The elusive adventures of Catherine Dior
When Catherine Dior, one of the heroic French Resistance workers captured by the Nazis, came face to face with her…
The year of living decisively: The Turning Point, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, reviewed
We tend to think of turning points as single moments of change — Saul on the road to Damascus or…
