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The power behind The Few: Rolls-Royce’s Merlin engine
Eighty years ago this summer Britain was facing its greatest moment of peril as Göring’s Luftwaffe attacked airfields, cities and…
Looking for love: Ghosts, by Dolly Alderton
Of all the successful modern female writers documenting their search for love, none has been as endearing as Dolly Alderton.…
We should never take our daily bread for granted
In the seventh and final chapter of this small but lingeringly powerful book, the author reveals his motivation for writing…
Ivan Morozov: the Russian businessman with a passion for the avant-garde
If you want to see the very best of Gauguin and Matisse, go east. That was the case in 1914…
A Jack Reacher travesty: The Sentinel, by Lee Child and Andrew Child, reviewed
So upsetting it would have been, for those of us who rate Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers so highly, if…
Euthanasia sitcom: What Are You Going Through, by Sigrid Nunez, reviewed
What Are You Going Through is both brilliant and mercifully brief. Weighing in at 200-odd pages, it can be read…
Playing devil’s advocate: a Mexican historian defends the Conquistadors
Many books claim to describe junctures that changed the world but few examine ones as consequential as Conquistadores: A New…
Lacrimae rerum: That Old Country Music, by Kevin Barry, reviewed
Some of my happiest fiction-reading hours have been spent in the company of Kevin Barry: two short-story collections, both prize-winners,…
From cheeky mop tops to long-haired holy men: The Beatles come of age in America
In his latest book, the veteran pop commentator David Hepworth is concerned with satisfaction, its acquisition and maintenance. On record,…
A passion for pastiche: China’s Potemkin villages
Closely inspect No. 23 Leinster Terrace, Bayswater and you might notice the house has no letter box. Push at the…
Diplomatic daughters go behind the scenes at Yalta
From Downing Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, history’s powerful inter-family influencers, whether spouses or children, have long operated behind weighty political…
Victoria Wood: stiletto in an oven glove
Even if you didn’t have an Auntie Dot in Cockermouth (the one who ate a raffia drinks coaster, mistaking it…
How the International Brigades were ‘thrown into the heart of the fire’
During the Spanish civil war of 1936 to 1939, 35,000 men and women from around the world volunteered to fight…
Older and grumpier: A Song for the Dark Times, by Ian Rankin, reviewed
By my reckoning, this is the 24th outing for John Rebus, Scotland’s best known retired police officer. One of the…
Dublin double act: Love, by Roddy Doyle, reviewed
Far be it from me to utter a word against the patron saint of Dublin pubs, Roddy Doyle. Granted he’s…
‘I wonder about his humanity’: Malcolm McDowell on Stanley Kubrick
Twenty-five years after making Spartacus, a parable of Roman decadence and rebellious slaves shot in California, Stanley Kubrick made Full…
Helen Macdonald could charm the birds out of the trees
When Helen Macdonald was a child, she had a way of calming herself during moments of stress: closing her eyes,…
Break-out and betrayal in Occupied Europe
Für dich, Tommy, ist der Krieg vorbei. However, many British servicemen, officers especially, didn’t want their war to be over.…
Appearances are deceptive: Trio, by William Boyd, reviewed
Talbot Kydd, film producer; Anny Viklund, American actress; Elfrida Wing, novelist; these make the trio of the title. Private lives…
Breakdown in Berlin: Red Pill, by Hari Kunzru, reviewed
‘I was what they call an “independent scholar”’, confides the narrator of Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill, a middle-aged writer from…
Shock and awe — what should we make of our Viking ancestors?
In June 793, a raiding force arrived by boat at the island monastery of Lindisfarne, on the Northumbrian coast. The…
Hitler’s devastating secret weapon: V2, by Robert Harris, reviewed
After Stalingrad, Hitler desperately needed an encouraging novelty. Wernher von Braun, Germany’s leading rocketeer in the second world war, expertly…
Opposites attract: Just Like You, by Nick Hornby, reviewed
Babysitters are having a literary moment. Following Kiley Reid’s debut Such a Fun Age, Nick Hornby is the latest author…
Julius Caesar’s assassins were widely regarded as heroes in Rome
It’s not as if Julius Caesar wasn’t warned about the Ides of March. Somebody thrust a written prediction of the…
What the sonnets tell us about Shakespeare
When Romeo and Juliet first meet at a party, their words to one another fall into the form of a…
