More from Books
As Lucian Freud’s fame increases his indiscretions multiply
Staying with Peregrine Eliot (later 10th Earl of St Germans) at Port Eliot in Cornwall, Lucian Freud remembered that the…
Forlorn Plorn: The Dickens Boy, by Thomas Keneally, reviewed
Parents are always terrified of bad family history repeating itself. Prince Albert dreaded his son Bertie turning into a roué…
The South Sea Company’s bonds were never meant to be a scam
In Money for Nothing, Thomas Levenson brings us into the story of the South Sea Bubble by writing about the…
Not such a hero: the tarnished legend of Robin Hood
Britain’s two most famous legendary figures, King Arthur and Robin Hood, remain enduringly and endearingly elusive, and thus ever-fascinating: Arthur…
Portrait of a paranoiac: Death in Her Hands, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
Like Ottessa Moshfegh’s first novel Eileen (2015), Death in Her Hands plays with the conventions of noir. Vesta Gul, a…
When Britannia ruled the southern waves
In 1798, Tipu Sultan of Mysore sent an embassy to Mauritius. At home, he had fought the British and seen…
Treasures or clutter? The problem of knowing what to keep
Every so often the past makes a pass at you. An old school report, a train ticket, a curl from…
My dazzling chum: Mayflies, by Andrew O’Hagan, reviewed
Presumably because a small part of it takes place in Salford, the epigraph to Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel consists of…
Never a dull sentence: the journalism of Harry Perry Robinson
Is Boris Johnson a fan of Harry Perry Robinson? If he isn’t, he really ought to be. Reading this absorbing…
A story without redemption: The Lying Life of Adults, by Elena Ferrante, reviewed
‘I don’t at all hate lies,’ Elena Ferrante explained in Frantumaglia, her manifesto for authorial anonymity. ‘I find them useful…
She just keeps rollin’ along: Colombia’s Magdalena River
As Colombia comes out of 50 years of civil war and into a still precarious peace, with some 220,000 dead,…
Bombs over London: V for Victory, by Lissa Evans, reviewed
Lissa Evans has been single-handedly rescuing the Hampstead novel from its reputation of being preoccupied by pretension and middle-class morality.…
Should we all be prepping for the end of days?
In the Covid-19 crisis the calamity-howlers have found a vindication: go back to survival mode and bunker down because nobody…
Beauty and the beast: Jane Birkin’s love affair with Serge Gainsbourg
I met Jane Birkin’s parents, who flit across these pages. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an actress in Noël Coward…
In just eight years Selim I became ‘God’s Shadow on Earth’
Faber must take a rather dim view of British readers’ historical awareness these days. This is a biography of one…
A rainy day in the Highlands: Summerwater, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
There is an old Yorkshire tale about a prosperous town which, legend has it, once stood on the site of…
It’s time to leave Chopin in peace
There’s a scene early on in A Song to Remember — Charles Vidor’s clunky Technicolor film of 1945 — in…
Who is telling the truth in Kate Reed Petty’s True Story?
This debut novel, which opens with ‘a high- school lacrosse party in 1999 and the rumour of a sexual assault,’…
The power of disinformation is that it’s so readily believed
On 27 November 1960 African and Indian diplomats visiting the UN in New York opened their mail to find a…
A toast to brotherhood: Summer, by Ali Smith, reviewed
The concluding novel of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a family affair. Her intergenerational group of seeming strangers from the…
When the King of the Delta Blues came home — the family life of Robert Johnson
Whatever would Robert Johnson, self-styled King of the Delta Blues, have made of the Black Lives Matter movement? His was…
Magic and miasma: Mordew, by Alex Pheby, reviewed
Mordew ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, as Elton John nearly sang. If they escape the ravages…
The crusaders were not such incompetent zealots after all
One of the strange effects that modernist, progressive society has had on what the French Annales school would refer to…
When Paris was the only place to be
For more than 100 years Paris has been as much a symbol and a myth as a geographical reality. The…
Private tragedies: Must I Go, by Yiyun Li, reviewed
I can think of few novels as bleak or dispiriting as Yiyun Li’s 2009 debut, The Vagrants. Set in a…
