More from Books
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…
Star signs
In 2002 I was living in Berlin. One day my upstairs neighbour Peter told me he had just returned from…
A disaster waiting to happen
Mountains are humanity’s most comforting topographical feature. Wherever you find them you will also find those who have flocked to…
The world on the rocks
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
The rebirth of a nation
Lord Macaulay wrote that ‘during the century and a half which followed the Conquest there is, to speak strictly, no…
Finding le mot juste
No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ,…
