Books
The beauty of the ampersand
This is such a great idea: a book with one short essay per punctuation mark or typographical symbol. Of course,…
Weighty matters
This is a novel about ‘mommy issues’. Rachel is a Reform Jew, ‘more Chanel bag Jew than Torah Jew’, and…
Escape from reality
Ewan Morrison is an intellectually nimble writer with a penchant for provocation. His work has included the novels, Distance, Ménage…
Holiday retreats
It was the 13th-century wall of a ruined Cistercian nunnery at the far end of her garden in Norfolk that…
Swimming with piranhas
‘What job do you want here?’ asked the editor of Vogue, interviewing a young hopeful. From behind her black sunglasses…
A collection of warring tribes
In his history of the Pacific War, Eagle Against the Sun, Ronald Spector described the state of the US army…
Inherited trauma
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
Slanging match
I’ve tried hard to think of someone I dislike enough to recommend this novel to, but have failed. Elfriede Jelinek…
Gesture of goodwill
Ella Al-Shamahi is a Brummie, born to a Yemeni Arab family. From a strict Muslim upbringing she transitioned (evidently con…
Women of the gospels
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys…
French fury
Sylvie Bermann was the French ambassador in London between 2014 and 2017. Her stint here was a notable success. She…
Sense without sensibility
Philip Hensher feels he should be on Jordan Peterson’s side, but finds it a struggle
The real rogue traders
When we think of those lurching moments last spring when it became clear that much of the world, not just…
Bright and beautiful
Edward St Aubyn’s ‘Patrick Melrose’ novels were loosely autobiographical renderings of the author’s harrowing, rarefied, drug-sozzled existence. Despite their subject…
Truckload of trouble
A father and his estranged 20-year-old daughter set off across France, sharing the driver’s cabin of a long-haul truck. This…
Dinners through the dynasties
A truth that ought to be universally acknowledged is that Chinese food, while much loved, is underappreciated. China certainly has…
Wind, sea and sky
Bird migration was once one of those unassailable mysteries that had baffled humankind since Aristotle. A strange hypothesis, genuinely advanced…
An oddly matched pair
On a shard of paper, some time in the bleak mid-1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald incorporated a favourite line from one…
On the game
For a novel set partly in a Soho brothel, Hot Stew is an oddly bloodless affair. Tawdry characters drift in…
Deepest, darkest Peru
As the planet gets more and more ravaged, the mind can begin to glaze over at the cumulative general statistics…
Crying in the wilderness
Even Edward Said would not have claimed to be ‘the 20th century’s most celebrated intellectual’. But neither was he ‘Professor of Terror’, says Justin Marozzi
More gossip and scandal
Chips Channon was conceited, snobbish, disloyal, voyeuristic and wrongheaded – all qualities most helpful to a great diarist, says Craig Brown
Walls of fear
In her 2017 travelogue Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe, the writer and poet Kapka Kassabova meets Emel,…
A robot with feelings
The world of Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel — let’s call it Ishville — is instantly recognisable. Our narrator, Klara, is…
The Russian conundrum
Churchill was wrong: Russia is neither a riddle nor an enigma. Russians themselves concoct endless stories to glorify their country’s…
