More from Books
The difficulty of building heaven on Earth: why utopias usually fail
The years after the first world war were a boom time for utopian communities. As the survivors of the conflict…
Mothers and daughters: I Couldn’t Love You More, by Esther Freud, reviewed
A new novel by Esther Freud — her ninth — raises the perennial but always fascinating question about the use…
Death by negligence: why did no one diagnose my sister’s TB?
In 2016, Arifa Akbar’s elder sister, Fauzia, died suddenly in the Royal Free Hospital, London at the age of 45.…
Journey to the Moon: The Things We’ve Seen, by Agustín Fernández Mallo, reviewed
‘Peace — slept for 14 hours. The roar of the sea slashing the rocks — is there any more soothing…
How a small Mediterranean island determined the outcome of the second world war
If you can tell the difference between Jack Hawkins and John Mills, and between a Stuka and a Sten gun,…
The road to firebombing Tokyo was paved with good intentions
In the 1930s, a group of American airmen had a dream. Air power, they believed, would do away with the…
It’s time the British faced some uncomfortable truths, says Matthew d’Ancona
As Britain starts its long Covid recovery, are deeper problems lurking beneath the surface? Matthew d’Ancona certainly thinks so, and…
A mighty contest from trivial things — the quarrel between Alexander Pope and Edmund Curll
Rapid technological advance, a dark underworld of uncensored publishing, a threatened rupture with Scotland, even fears of a new outbreak…
It takes a trained ear fully to appreciate Indian music
At George Harrison’s 1971 concert for Bangladesh, awkwardly, the audience applauded after Ravi Shankar and his musicians had paused to…
The defiance of the ‘ghetto girls’ who resisted the Nazis
‘Jewish Resistance in Poland: Women Trample Nazi Soldiers,’ ran a New York headline in late 1942. That autumn, the Nazi…
A Danubian Narnia: Nostalgia, by Mircea Cartarescu, reviewed
Mircea Cartarescu likens his native Romania to a Latin American country stranded in eastern Europe. Certainly, his writing delivers not…
And then there were five: The High House, by Jessie Greengrass, reviewed
In 2009 Margaret Atwood published The Year of the Flood, set in the aftermath of a waterless flood, a flu-like…
What happens next? Gauging the fallout from the pandemic
What just happened? Some 15 months after the pandemic first struck, it’s still horribly unclear, which is perhaps why there…
Waiting for Gödel is over: the reclusive genius emerges from the shadows
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
A draining experience: Insignificance, by James Clammer, reviewed
Spare a thought for the white van man. It’s not yet nine on a summer’s morning and already Joseph, a…
The empire that sprang from nowhere under the banner of Islam
When the British formed the basis of their empire in the 1600s by acquiring territories in India and North America,…
Brave new virtual world: The Startup Wife, by Tahmima Anam, reviewed
Welcome to Utopia — not an idyllic arcadia but a secretive tech incubator in a Manhattan office block. Here a…
Russian memoirs are prone to a particular form of angst
Perhaps the secret to understanding Russian history lies in its grammar: it lacks a pluperfect tense. In Latin, English and…
The foghorn’s haunting hoot is a sad loss
Halfway through what must count as one of the more esoteric quests, Jennifer Lucy Allan finds herself on a hill…
An impossible guest: Second Place, by Rachel Cusk, reviewed
A great writer must be prepared to risk ridiculousness — not ridicule, although that may follow, but the possibility that…
Bird-brained: Brood, by Jackie Polzin, reviewed
This is not a novel about four chickens of various character — Gloria, Miss Hennepin County, Gam Gam and Darkness…
Poems are the Duracell batteries of language, says Simon Armitage
Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…
Good luck enjoying eating salmon ever again
‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by cat videos,’ begins Henry Mance’s How to Love Animals, winningly.…
The sweet smell of success: the story behind Chanel No 5’s popularity
This is a curious book, by turns profound and whimsical. Karl Schlögel, a professor of Eastern European history at Frankfurt,…
The many contradictions of modern motherhood
There are few certainties in life. Death and taxes are the ones regularly trotted out. However, there is another that…
