More from Books
A true bohemian
It is well established that artists are not always the nicest people. On the surface, the life of the model,…
Basic instincts
What does it mean to be a body in this world? It’s the question animating Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals. Our…
The catastrophe unfolds
The most alarming aspect of living in America is the recurring sensation that no one is in charge. This is…
Language explodes
‘How good you are in explosition!’ The first ever unabridged recording of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is a monumental achievement…
An unlikely tragic hero
In this Age of Trump, as we cast about for some moment in American history that might help us make…
The flirt at the funeral
Here is a rare dud from the usually reliable Deborah Moggach. Her protagonist, Pru, finds herself alone at 69 after…
Last rites and wrongs
If death is not an event in life, as Wittgenstein observed, it’s a curious way to structure a novel. But…
A pretty kettle of fish
The other day a friend asked me what a lascar was. Fair enough: it’s not a word you come across…
Still the Fab Five
In my second year at secondary school we were all deeply envious of a girl named Judi Taylor because, obviously,…
Footprints in the mud
During the first lockdown last year, taking my lockdown puppy for our Boris-sanctioned daily walks, I discovered a love of…
The book as narrator
It is a truism that a book needs readers in order to have a meaningful existence. Hugo Hamilton’s The Pages…
An open or shut case?
Writers of memoirs are often praised for their honesty — but how do we know? I found I did believe…
The chaser and the chaste
Consider the hare and the hyena. The hare, Clement of Alexandria told readers of his 2nd-century sexual self-help manual Paedagogus,…
A death foretold
In March 2014 Gabriel García Márquez went down with a cold. The man who wrote beautifully about ageing was approaching…
Writers to the rescue
William Loxley’s lively account of ‘Bloomsbury, the Blitz and Horizon magazine’ begins with W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood emigrating to…
From cradle to grave
You need to be wary of being too flattering about English churches. As John Betjeman said: ‘Be careful before you…
A stunning revelation
Sir Jeremy Farrar, the head of the Wellcome Trust, writes that ‘the last year has been an eye-opener for me.…
Sacred and dammed
It’s one of the most tantalising travel images in the world — a felucca floating along the Nile at sunset,…
A sly old fox
Rumours reach me that the libel report for Stephen Bayley’s forthcoming biography of Terence Conran was longer than the book…
No clowning around
What’s so serious about a red nose? How should we analyse the ‘specific socio-historical relations’ and ‘aesthetic trends particular to…
Bitter pills to swallow
What is it like to go mad? Not so much developing depression or having a panic attack — which is…
The thunderclap moment
For eight years I rented a small house in Oxford overlooking the canal. The landlord, a poet and novelist younger…
A man with a plan for Manhattan
What makes a city? The collective labour of millions packed into its history; the constant forgetting of incomers who arrive…
Three brides for three brothers
Sunjeev Sahota’s novels present an unvarnished image of British Asian lives. Ours Are the Streets chronicles a suicide bomber’s radicalisation,…
The best times you’ll never remember
It was once a favourite theory of optimistic drunkards that a suitably ‘moderate’ level of alcohol consumption provided covert health…
