More from Books
Glorious ruins
Oliver Smith takes us on a tour of train graveyards, bunkers, ghost towns, crumbling palaces – and a 7,000-bedroom hotel in North Korea that never even opened
Hotel of horror
A teenage maid goes missing after a party of men arrive at a lonely alpine hotel for a sinister carnival feast
The nation’s attack dogs
Mark Urban describes the remarkable feats of the parachute regiment created under Churchill’s orders in June 1940 to rival the Fallschirmjäger
The eye of the beholder
Other artists include James Gillray, Quentin Blake, Lucian Freud – and those inspired over the centuries by an overlooked subject in art history: the egg
Storm clouds brewing
Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, Gardner’s novel tells the story of young Neva, whose ability to predict the weather nearly ruins her
The man who knew everyone
The New York socialite devoted much of his time to saving wild life in Kenya – though a new biography ignores some of his less reputable views
Old wine in new wineskins
With 7,000 living languages now in the world, there are countless pitfalls for translators, as John Barton demonstrates
Disparate tribes
There is no single community, Harry Freedman stresses, but a multitude of voices ranging from the liberal to the ultra-orthodox
Weeping and laughter
Mrs Yi is a folk healer in a remote Chinese village where the living commune with the dead and rocks relay warning messages
Making waves
Lily Le Brun explores our shifting relationship with the shoreline through works by Vanessa Bell, Paul Nash, Bridget Riley and other modernists
Deadlier than the male
There are hard-hitting thrillers from Margie Orford and Rijula Das – as well as an engaging mystery by Erri de Luca
A kingdom of the mind
When an Irish shipbuilder’s son was crowned king of a Caribbean rock in 1880, few would have guessed how long this eccentric monarchy would last
Order, meaning and beauty
Witold Rybczynski’s majestic survey takes us from Brittany in 4,800 BC to Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, designed by Frank Gehry
The might of night
Moving stealthily through starlit fields and woods, John Lewis-Stempel marvels at nature’s many dark mysteries
Comfort in austerity
There’s advice on pressure cooking and butter-making, plus simple recipes for family meals, Mediterranean vegan dishes and south Asian specialities
Ghosts of Rwanda
The veteran journalist Fergal Keane describes the horror of witnessing atrocities worldwide – and his mystifying compulsion to return for more
A man to fake dying for
Donna Freed finally learns the truth about her biological parents, whose insurance fraud in 1960s America resembled the plot of Double Indemnity
Bent coppers
Tom Harper exposes deep-grained criminality at the Met, including actively assisting violent offenders and stealing thousands from the public purse
The luck of the devil
Lenin and Mussolini were chief among 20th-century leaders who owed their initial success purely to chance, says Ian Kershaw
Dashed dreams
Twin brothers sponsor a radical building programme in postwar Britain – but the collapse of a tower block raises questions of conscience and accountability
Our very own treasure island
The vast majority of significant finds are now unearthed by amateurs – including the Nebra Sky Disc, the centrepiece of the British Museum’s recent Stonehenge exhibition
A nagging sense of loss
Even if notions of beauty are treacherously fugitive, and even if interpretations of history are nowadays subject to revision by…
Going to ground
Do you ever think about the ground beneath your feet? I do. Having read a number of popular science books…
A monument to ornithology
The text of this well illustrated book is mostly John James Audubon’s, from journals unpublished in his lifetime. Part I…
Wacky words and ideas
The standard complaint of anyone doing a Christmas gift books guide is that the books aren’t up to much. I…
