Books
The show that bombed
‘Miss World 1970’ is the rather glorious title that Jennifer Hosten won. That was the year that the contest, then…
An age-old problem
‘I’m getting rather tired of me,’ begins Jan Morris in one of the diary entries in Thinking Again, almost certainly…
Descent into lawlessness
It was perhaps a mistake to re-read Sebastian Barry’s award-winning Days Without End before its sequel, A Thousand Moons, since…
James Bond and Q in one
Early one morning in October 1874 a barge carrying three barrels of benzoline and five tons of gunpowder blew up…
Things that go bump in the night
This is a paranormal book — by which I mean it exists in a truly out of the ordinary netherworld…
Mysteries multiply
Steampunk, a shapeshifting and unpredictable genre, has a way of subverting the past, mischievously disordering the universe with historical what-ifs.…
A woman of no importance
‘Buy pink baby clothes,’Kim Jiyoung, the protagonist of this bestselling South Korean novel is told at the obstetrician’s surgery. Jiyoung’s…
Plumbing the depths
Two years ago, the counter-extremist analyst Julia Ebner decided she needed to delve deeper into the extremists trying to disrupt…
Riotous performances
Emma Smith examines the peculiarly disruptive effect of Shakespeare’s plays on American society over the centuries
The worm in the bud
The Mediterranean-centred era spanning a century or so either side of 1492 is filled to the brim with stories. There…
A thousand and one nightmares
The Moroccan-born Leïla Slimani has made her name writing novels of propulsive intensity. Lullaby, the story of a nanny who…
Grandfather’s story
Louise Erdrich’s grandfather, Patrick Gourneau, was tribal chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa when the US Congress imposed…
The courage of their convictions
Historians argue endlessly and pointlessly about the extent to which the human factor rather than brute circumstance determines the course…
A story of low self-esteem
Short, fat and shy, the protagonist of Adam Mars-Jones’s latest novel doesn’t have much going for him; even his name…
Escape into music
Were this a less good book than it is, it would be called How Bach Can Help You Grieve. As…
Apple of discord
Forty-seven years ago, Virago paperbacks, with their stylish green spines and hint-of-the-transgressive colophons of a red apple with a bite…
The purity myth
In the award-winning musical Avenue Q, filthy-minded puppets sang about schadenfreude, internet porn, loud sex, the uselessness of an English…
First novels: The children’s hour
Kiley Reid’s Philadelphia-set debut, Such a Fun Age (Bloomsbury, £12.99), is a satire on white saviour syndrome, woke culture and…
No stone unturned
Andrew Ziminski is the man who rebuilt the West Country. For 30 years, this skilled stonemason has renovated some of…
Tales out of school
‘James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel,’ says Hilary Mantel on the cover of English Monsters, which,…
Mathematical mysteries
The reality (or lack thereof) of numbers is the kind of problem some philosophers consider overwhelmingly important, but it’s of…
In his own sweet way
On 8 November 1954, Dave Brubeck’s portrait appeared on the cover of Time magazine, accompanied by the words ‘The Joints…
The battle still to come
In Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders, the social historian Jane Robinson — whose previous books include histories of suffragettes and bluestockings…
The road to Tower Hill
In 1540, he, himself, Lord Cromwell fell victim to the king’s caprice. His execution brings to a close one of English literature’s great trilogies, says Mark Lawson
Accidents waiting to happen
Humanity has come startlingly close to destroying itself in the 75 or so years in which it has had the…
