More from Books
Bring me sunshine
In the dark days of a terrible winter, Elizabeth David began writing her first book, about Mediterranean food. The timing…
The making of a monster
Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the trenches of the Great War, is consumed by bloodlust, which…
Strength though suffering
Greatness. Genius. Can you bottle it? Is there a formula? Inspired by his Radio 4 series Great Lives, Matthew Parris…
Seeing anew
The title of this collection of journalism is a problem. Not the Kant’s Little Prussian Head bit, which, though opaque,…
Evil genius
One day someone is going to have to write the definitive study of Wikipedia’s influence on letters. What, after all,…
A unique way of thinking
An old, cynical adage holds that ‘if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. I remembered…
Modern man’s role
Masculinity, we are often told, is in crisis. The narrator of Men and Apparitions, Professor Ezekiel (Zeke) Stark, both studies…
In cold blood
It was said that Reginald Maudling, as home secretary, once boarded a plane in Belfast and immediately requested a stiff…
Love gone wrong
Do you think your mother slept with T.S. Eliot? That was the question I needed to ask the 98-year-old in…
The spiritual dimension
Dan Pearson is one of the finest of all British garden designers, blessed with sensitivity, a wonderful eye, deep plant…
The death of discourse
Liberal values are under attack on two flanks. Those of us who think extensive freedom of expression, universal human rights…
Everest or bust
Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all 14 of the planet’s peaks higher than 8,000 metres, is probably the…
From light into darkness
The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya was born in Zaragoza in 1746, the son of a gilder whose livelihood was…
Fabulous fabrics
On the weekly ‘opinions’ afternoons, the public would arrive with carefully wrapped parcels holding items to be identified, writes Claire…
Raw, ruthless politics
Hours after Benazir Bhutto arrived back in Pakistan on 18 October 2007, two bombs exploded near the bullet-proof truck carrying…
Mover and shaker
As Lionel Barber recounts unrolling his pitch to replace me as editor of the Financial Times to the newspaper’s proprietor…
A fine bromance
This book has appeared with no fuss or fanfare and yet by any account it is something of a scoop.…
Restless spirit
Sybille Bedford died in 2006, just short of 95. She left four novels, a travel book, two volumes of legal…
Return of the Christmas Elves
We have a fine crop of Christmas gift books this year, so good that some of them actually qualify as…
The land that time forgot
The region of Dolpo in Nepal forms part of a border zone between that country and China in the central…
Comfort in dark times
Nigella Lawson is many things to many people: the perfect hostess, the TV star, the thinking man’s crumpet. To me…
Beggaring belief
Eight centuries ago in Turkey, at a gathering of intellectuals, a Muslim sultan insisted that one of his courtiers write…
From St Petersburg to St Andrews
Aneliya, the Russian narrator of David Keenan’s enjoyably weird new novel, is worried about her dad. Tomasz’s modest music career…
Haunted by the past
Mr Wilder & Me is not in any way a state- of-the-nation novel — and thank goodness. Brilliant as Jonathan…
Secret understanding
John le Carré once wrote sadly that he felt ‘shifty’ about his contribution to the glamorisation of the spying business.…
