Books
The road to Rome
Matthew Kneale is much drawn to people of the past. In his award-winning English Passengers, he captured the sensibilities of…
Playing tag and Pooh sticks
We live in an urban world. It’s a statistical fact. The great outdoors for most of us is a thing…
The thrill of the chase
A guide to reading in lockdown. My involvement with crime and mystery fiction started when I was four. The first…
Courting danger
When Queen Alexandra chose her ladies in waiting she prudently surrounded herself with elderly and plainish ones, who did not…
Child of nature
Dara McAnulty is a teenage naturalist from Northern Ireland. He has autism; so do his brother, sister and mother —…
Middle-aged thrills
Beth, the protagonist of Joanna Briscoe’s The Seduction, reminded me of Clare in Tessa Hadley’s debut, Accidents in the Home.…
All things considered
What does Jony Ive, the designer of Apple’s iPhone, have in common with Peter Perez Burdett, the first Englishman to…
Northern noir
It is winter in north Yorkshire. On the brink of New Year, Jake, a laconic, isolated former farmhand in his…
Silent witnesses
History is only as good as its sources. It is limited largely to what has survived of written records, and…
Prepared for the worst
This book could not have been published at a better time — nor, in a way, at a worse time.…
Feeling left behind
In her 2010 novel So Much for That, Lionel Shriver examined the American healthcare system with a spiky sensitivity. Big…
Reports of its death are exaggerated
These days the world seems to end with staggering regularity. From the financial crisis to Brexit to Trump to a…
City of myth and mystery
The Spartans were not the only Greeks to die at Thermopylae. On the fateful final morning of the battle, when…
The Mystery of Charles Dickens
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores the many rival identities of Charles Dickens
Together and apart
Twins are literary dynamite. For writers, they’re perfect for thrashing out notions of free will, the pinballing of cause and…
Movers and shakers
What have the Akkadians ever done for us? As it turns out, rather a lot, as Philip Matyszak reveals in…
The pain of forgetting
‘Grief is the price we pay for love,’ the Queen once wrote. This memoir is steeped in the pain of…
Random souvenirs
Those who have been on creative writing courses may be familiar with the ‘I remember’ exercise. The two words become…
Taking a lot of flak
Those of us who write occasionally about military aviation can only admire the compelling personal experience that John Nichol brings…
Off to a rocky start
The Mayflower’s journey did not simply end with landfall at Plymouth Rock, if indeed it ever arrived there in the…
All too kind
Are humans by nature really more puppy than wolf? Oren Harman tests the science
Tough-minded and tender-hearted
Nine cups of milky Nescafé Gold Blend a day; a low-tar cigarette smouldering; a hot-water-bottle always on her lap; the…
A great antidote to grief
Viewed from a purely private garden perspective, this has been a ver mirabilis. The blossom has been wonderful and long-lasting,…
Children go missing
Hot on the heels of The Stranger, the Netflix series based on his novel but transplanted to the UK, Harlan…
Unsavoury bedfellows
Just after John Pearson finished writing The Profession of Violence, his celebrated biography of the Krays, both his and his…
