More from Books
A bloodletting for the soul
Ever since my early youth I have loved, followed and respected a certain music genre that some people consider strange,…
Slaves to hunger
‘It was a gray mass of people in rags, lying motionless with bloodless, pale faces, cropped hair, with a shifty,…
The science of scent
Harold McGee’s Nose Dive: A Field Guide to the World’s Smells is an ambitious and enormous work. Indeed it’s so…
Poacher turned gamekeeper
A common but flawed assumption about Joseph Ratzinger is that he is simply an ardent conservative. That’s the figure we…
Memoirs without memory
James Kelman doubtless remains best known for his 1994 Booker prize win for How Late It Was, How Late and…
Graphic reportage
One of the running jokes about ‘serious’ graphic novels is that so many seem to consist, one way and another,…
Transport of joy
If 2020 has given us something to talk about other than Covid, it’s been history — and, more precisely, to…
A great Liberal imperialist
This meaty but easily digested biography pivots around the events either side of that fateful evening of 4 August 1914…
A macabre legend
The problem with telling stories about Harvard is that Harvard, if it teaches anything these days, teaches distrust of stories.…
Reliving the golden moment
What caught my eye towards the end of Look Again was this conversation between David Bailey and the shoe designer…
Bright and beautiful
When he was a student, the celebrated American modernist master Robert Rauschenberg once told me that his ‘greatest teacher’ —…
In the same boat
‘We should be living in a brave country and on a brave planet that bravely distributes its occupants,’ thinks Rose…
Of human bondage
Wrestling with the history of the British Empire is the unfinished and unfinishable project of our history. Time’s Monster takes…
Jokes or gags?
Here are a couple of books that seek to tackle the difficult issue of comedy on the front line. One…
Man of mystic sorrow
John Steinbeck didn’t believe in God — but he didn’t believe much in humanity either. When push came to shove,…
The power of the pamphlet
Researching the seditious literature of earlier periods is seldom suspenseful, pulse-quickening work. For every thrill of archival discovery, there are…
Anything but a quiet life
Kikuko Tsumura is a multi-prizewinning Japanese author whose mischievously deceptive new novel takes us into what purports to be the…
A Scottish Paradise
As every Italian schoolchild knows, The Divine Comedy opens in a supernatural dark wood just before sunrise on Good Friday…
Animal magic
J.K. Rowling has written a book for children — and you know what? It’s a charmer. The Ickabod(Hachette, £20) was…
Four disparate thinkers
How do you write a group biography of people who never actually formed a group? Such is the challenge Wolfram…
Poet on the brink
‘A matter that hurts me is that I have made many hundreds of people laugh, in various cities, during the…
Quite smitten
As his biographer, I feel obliged to quote John Updike’s wise sayings — among them the first rule in his…
No one wants to know
If the homage wasn’t clear from the title, Tana French makes sure throughout The Searcher, her seventh novel and second…
Meaningful silences
Shirley Hazzard was in her late twenties when, in 1959, somewhat diffidently, she submitted her first short story to the…
Seriously overrated
Should the world be faster or slower? This is a question relevant to global economics, politics and culture. But not…
