Books
The sacred chickens that ruled the roost in ancient Rome
Even the most cursory glance at the classical period reveals the central place that birds played in the religious and…
The cruel end of Emmanuel Barthélemy –as a waxwork in the Chamber of Horrors
This is a biography that begins with a bang, swiftly followed by puddles of blood, shrieks of ‘Murder!’ and a…
Bibi Netanyahu: Israel’s unloved, unlovable necessity
Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the most unloved and unlovable figures in Israeli politics, a solid finish in a competitive…
My brilliant career hits the drystone wall
We all tell stories about ourselves, every one of us. ‘I’m a useless cook.’ ‘Spiders don’t scare me.’ Not all…
1983: the year the world nearly ended
In 1983, Soviet spies skulked in our midnight streets to check the lights were out. The Kremlin, convinced the West…
The sound of silence that echoes round Paul Simon
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble choosing the jacket cover of Robert Hilburn’s authorised biography of Paul Simon…
Carbon – the stuff of life we’re shamefully ignorant about
‘I didn’t realise we were carbon,’ said a friend to whom I mentioned this book. She was the first of…
America’s wittiest women fight to be taken seriously
From Aphra Behn to Virginia Woolf, women who make a living by their pens have frequently felt the need to…
Is it acceptable to spin an entertaining fantasy from real-life crime?
How can you defend a man you hate? John Fairfax, in his Blind Defence (Little Brown, £16.99), explores this dilemma.…
The wilder shores of excess in William Trevor’s fiction
A very prolific and long-standing writer of short stories reveals himself. William Trevor, who died in 2016, owned up to…
A violent ultimatum ended Giacometti’s brief flirtation with Marlene Dietrich
Those with long enough memories may remember Desmond Morris as the presenter of the hit ITV children’s programme of Zoo…
What was Donald Trump’s father doing at a notorious KKK rally in 1927?
The figure of Donald Trump looms over Sarah Churchwell’s new history of American national identity, which highlights the ugliest features…
The stubborn old Hanoverians saw new Gunpowder Plots everywhere
Once won, rights and freedoms are taken for granted. We all find it difficult to imagine life before the Married…
A brave, bold failure
In the high summer of 1944 the Allies achieved their major victory in Normandy with the closing of the German…
Might LSD be good for you?
When Peregrine Worsthorne was on Desert Island Discs in 1992, he chose as his luxury item a lifetime supply of…
The Siege of Acre: a monstrous blot on the Third Crusade
Lionheart! Saladin! Massacre! There is no shortage of larger-than-life characters and drama in the epic, two-year siege of Acre, the…
Love me or go to hell – Tchaikovsky’s message to his public
This is a wonderful and moving book of correspondence and biographical documents promising one Tchaikovsky in its subtitle and introduction,…
Fried squid, stale sweat and sensuality in Ian Buruma’s Tokyo
In 1975, the 24-year-old Ian Buruma (now an award-winning essayist and historian, and the editor of the New York Review…
The most shocking sight in ancient Greece: men in trousers
In his robust new biography of Alcibiades, David Stuttard describes how the mercurial Greek general shocked his contemporaries by adopting…
Hernando Columbus deserves to be as famous as his father, Christopher
On 9 May 1502, a young Spaniard joined the fleet setting sail for the newly discovered Americas. The boy, Hernando,…
The Wallis Simpson I knew – by Nicky Haslam
One would have thought this particular can of worms might, after nearly 80 years, be well past its sell-by date.…
We still live in the age of dinosaurs
The age of dinosaurs is a perennial favourite on any time traveller’s wishlist. Even though we’re technically still in it…
I want Lorrie Moore to be my BFF
Is there anything more depressing than the prospect of reading a writer’s collected essays, journalism and occasional pieces? Most of…
The Chernobyl catastrophe was a foregone conclusion
In the early days of the atomic age, Soviet students debated whether it was nobler to become a physicist or…
Northern, posh and Brummie are the only accents we recognise
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rab C. Nesbitt excepted, it has become quite difficult to infer much from people’s appearance. In these…
