More from Books
The enduring miracle of human birth – a history
Everyone who has ever lived came out of a woman’s body – a fact even more extraordinary when narrow hips and large skulls mean the human form is hardly precision engineered for such a feat
Starry starry night: the return of the sleeper train
Slow travel is in vogue and with it the renaissance of the railways. And what better way to journey by night across borders in the company of strangers?
Clerical skulduggery on the far borders of 1830s Germany
The Barchester Chronicles it isn’t, but this short and lively account of one of history’s footnotes reminds us that the culture wars existed long before TikTok and Twitter
Lives upended: TonyInterruptor, by Nicola Barker, reviewed
At an improvised jazz performance a man interrupts a trumpet solo asking: ‘Is this honest?’ The incident goes viral, prompting much comic argument about abstractions
The enigma of C.P. Cavafy
The homosexual poet from Alexandria avoided publication in his lifetime, despite being a ruthless self-promoter with a very high opinion of his own work
An ill wind: Helm, by Sarah Hall, reviewed
Hall’s protagonist in this extraordinary novel is Britain’s only named wind, a ferocious, mischievous beast that has been hitting Cumbria’s Eden Vale from time immemorial
Art and moralising don’t mix
Somewhat late in the day, Rosanna McLaughlin condemns the way art is now obliged to communicate clear and approvable messages, resulting in timid, defensive, rule-bound works
The greatest military folly of modern times
Kevin Passmore explains why the construction of the Maginot Line, France’s vast defensive network of the interwar years, proved such a failure
I actually feel sorry for Prince Andrew
Andrew Lownie’s minutely detailed account of the Duke of York’s disgrace and downfall achieves the near impossible
A summer romance: Six Weeks by the Sea, by Paula Byrne, reviewed
Byrne imagines the twentysomething Jane Austen, on holiday in Sidmouth, falling for the lawyer Samuel Rose – a perfect foil, being a cross between Mr Darcy and Mr Knightley
A sensory awakening: the adventures of a cheesemonger
The high-flying journalist Michael Finnerty takes a break in midlife to learn the art of cheesemaking in Borough Market – and finds himself fleeing a knife-wielding terrorist
‘My ghastly lonely life’ on the Costa Brava – Truman Capote
The small coastal town of Palamos left little impression on Capote while writing In Cold Blood there, so tracing his steps becomes a pointless exercise, as Leila Guerriero soon discovers
The woman I’m not – Nicola Sturgeon
Scotland’s former first minister spends most of her memoir telling us how different she is from her public image
Culture clash: Sympathy Tokyo Tower, by Rie Qudan, reviewed
Social, moral, architectural and linguistic problems collide in this gem of a novel set in lightly altered contemporary Tokyo
The enduring pathos of Wound Man
The medieval surgical diagram evolves over centuries into an internationally recognised image, offering a striking portrayal of human suffering, love of detail and medical knowledge
How can Gwyneth Paltrow bear so much ridicule?
The frail-looking movie star turns out to surprisingly thick-skinned as well as shrewd: a curious combination of entrepreneurial survivor and woo-woo artiste
Deception by stealth: the scammer’s long game
Swindled out of almost $100,000, Johnathan Walton warns of the insidious strategies lasting years of the really determined con artist
The AI apocalypse is the least of our worries
A host of other catastrophes are far more likely to destroy the planet, including solar storms, super volcanoes, nuclear winter, biowarfare and even asteroid strike
Campus antics: Seduction Theory, by Emily Adrian, reviewed
Two creative writing professors in a ‘deeply rewarding’ marriage separately decide to press the self-destruct button
The scourge of the sensitivity reader
A comparatively new figure with no accredited expertise now dictates to literary agents, senior editors and award-winning authors
The spiritual journey of St Augustine
Christians should consider themselves ‘peregrini’, said Augustine, and his life on the periphery of the Roman empire taught him that we are all citizens of nowhere
What the Quran has to say about slavery
While it attaches high moral value to emancipation, it acknowledges the legitimacy of slavery and the sexual exploitation of woman – justifying forced concubinage by certain Islamic regimes
Mossad’s secret allies in Operation Wrath of God
Aviva Guttmann reveals how the intelligence-sharing network the Club de Berne aided Israel in avenging the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre
Successful modern design follows no rules
The greatest designers have a unique way of seeing things – a vision that is essentially intuitive, says Google’s User Experience guru Maggie Gram
It was drug addiction that killed for Elvis, not his greedy manager
‘Colonel’ Tom Parker may have struck a hard bargain to fund his compulsive gambling habit, but his devotion to Presley was total, says Peter Guralnick
