More from Books
Voyages into the unknown
A marine biologist attempts to explore a newly discovered mid-Atlantic trench, but finds its destructive power both attracts and repels all who approach it
A sister’s quest for justice
Ten women, on average, are killed there every day – and Cristina Rivera Garza’s investigation of her sister’s murder is met with the usual ‘silence of impunity’
His own best creation
Once a beacon at events with his sunglasses and white ponytail, the designer who revived many failing fashion houses has left nothing of himself behind
Courtiers and connoisseurs
Charles I’s patronage of the arts, in particular, inspired his courtiers to commission their own family portraits and spend fortunes on acquiring Venetian masterpieces
Inside the Factory
When two teenage typists employed by Andy Warhol start tagging along to his amphetamine-fuelled parties, their lives spiral out of control
The first scientist
A mere fragment survives of the Greek philosopher’s work, but other sources attest to his bold ideas about the universe, human evolution and the weather
Ghosts of the past
Painful memories resurface for a retired detective when his help is sought with a cold case murder
The masque of life
The actors who appear to be doing nothing are now the ones most revered – but acting is natural, says David Thomson: it’s what we all do all the time
The battle for the Nile
The explorers’ journey to solve the great geographical puzzle of the Victorian age, and the bad blood it resulted in, is described in gripping detail by Candice Millard
A modern witch-hunt
For centuries, elderly women have been scorned as crones, hags and scolds – but it’s not only men who are belittling them now, says Victoria Smith
Sisters in arms
‘I didn’t even want to go to Spain. I had to. Because’, said the American writer Josephine Herbst – just one of the sisterhood to become immersed in the struggle
Mining gold
Single volumes that fitted in a knapsack sustained many soldiers in the world wars, and have inspired countless schoolchildren to learn poems by heart
A grief ago
Bernard Wasserstein describes the dreadful fate of Jews in Krakowiec in the 1940s – and is astonished that a statue has been erected there to one of their chief persecutors
Majestic survivors
The lifespans of cedars, oaks and yews are remarkable enough, but they pale in comparison to America’s bristlecone pines
Heroes and villeins
Chaucer’s motley crew help to encapsulate the richness and diversity of the late-medieval world and its growing literacy, says Ian Mortimer
The impossible subject
Two respected family men are each burdened by an unacceptable private life, in a debut novel based on the experiences of John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis
Opposites attract
A young guerrilla gardener and an American billionaire vie for a plot of land in New Zealand. Can they trust one another to reach an agreement?
Falling on deaf ears
Leah Broad celebrates four pioneering musicians who battled male prejudice throughout the past century – yet the situation remains stubbornly unchanged
Strange noises from upstairs
Trapped abroad during lockdown, a lackadaisical reviewer is spurred to investigate the mysterious noises coming from the floor above his hotel suite
The trapdoor opens
In a powerful and ultimately heartening memoir, the Oxford professor describes being trapped in a mutinous body, and what it does to the spirit
Guns and roses
The novelist and travel writer reflects on the resilience of the human spirit in countries whose staggering beauty has largely been trashed
Triumphs and disasters
It was a year packed with drama – from the transatlantic crossing of the SS Great Britain to the start of the Irish potato blight that would leave millions starving
A case of underexposure
The biographer and journalist was always reluctant to write about herself, and this posthumously published memoir is hemmed in by what she kept locked away
Man of many parts
The learning on display in this latest Collected Non-Fiction is as astonishing as ever – though ‘B-sides and Rarities’ might describe the more marginal pieces
The plight of Wales
Exploring stretches of the country’s Roman road, Tom Bullough notes how climate change and environmental degradation are seriously threatening the landscape
