More from Books
Driven into the ground
Remember ashtrays in cars? Soon cars will themselves become objects of wet-eyed nostalgic reverie. A thrilling era of propelling ourselves,…
Bombs over Belfast
Caught outside at the start of a raid in the Belfast Blitz as the incendiary bombs rain down, Audrey looks…
A controlling monster
If vivid, drily hilarious tales about messy families stuffed with passive aggression and seething resentment are your thing, you will…
Knotty problems
Anne Tyler’s 24th novel French Braid opens in 2010 in Philadelphia train station. We find the teenage Serena, who has…
Which Mary is which?
Is there a patron saint of conjecture? Perhaps it is a name known only to Bible scholars, who have rich…
An awful warning
Sins of My Father begins with an ending. Describing her 61-year-old parent’s final desperate flight from a life of vibrant…
Cold comfort
The story of the five women waiting at home for Captain Scott and his doomed polar party is naturally occluded…
Mission accomplished
Nigel Farage was never even an MP, but Michael Crick argues convincingly that he is one of the top five…
The making of a murderer
Were it not for an event on the night of 14 April 1865, John Wilkes Booth would be remembered, if…
Merlin’s stones
When it comes to Stonehenge, we are like children continually asking why and never getting a conclusive answer. There are…
The lady vanishes
How to review a book that pokes fun at critics? When the protagonist of María Gainza’s Portrait of an Unknown…
A magical epic
When the first volume of Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy appeared in 2019, it was quickly recognised as a masterly…
The trauma of conquest
By any yardstick, the Norman Conquest was a ghastly business. Within two decades, the English aristocracy had been more than…
The heart bleeds
‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…
The making of a poet
Charles Causley was a poet’s poet. Both Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin considered him the finest candidate for the laureateship,…
A troubled past
Andrew Miller specialises in characters who are lost, often struggling to deal with the burden of failure. They don’t come…
Back with a vengeance
If you were a teenager before 2005, one reminder of tuberculosis in British life is that small circular scar on…
Absurdities abound
For 20 years of my adult life, I moonlighted as a private tutor. After a full day in the office…
Finding a voice
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
Atwood adrift
Margaret Atwood is among the major writers of English fiction of our time. This is a very boring way to…
The war in the shadows
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
Waters of forgetfulness
Julie Otsuka has good rhythm, sentences that move to a satisfying beat. Even as her tone shifts — from tender…
God’s first draft
Readers familiar with Sheila Heti’s work, most notably How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood, in which she examines both…
Ignoble ambitions
This is the gripping story of the ever-fluctuating fortunes of three generations of the Dudley dynasty, servants to — and…
Hold on to your hats, boys
Stephen Daisley 5 March 2022 9:00 am
The greatest ever social media spat took place before the first tweet was sent, and was conducted via fax, which…