Books
Surprises in store
In these circumstances there’s a temptation to reach for the longest novel imaginable. If you’re not going to read Proust…
A smaller man
Never trust a person who keeps a diary. After all, who keeps a diary other than someone who wants subsequently…
Stepmothers, and other bad apples
Fairy stories were not originally aimed at children, and we do not know what the first audience responses were; but…
The inner circle from hell
Putin’s corrupt cronies may change, but the paranoid world view they all share remains the same, says Owen Matthews
Tales of Jolly Jack Tar
Seafaring and the rule of the waves — as the song would have it — was an integral part of…
Deepest, darkest desires
In Henry and June, Anaïs Nin asks her cousin Eduardo if one can be freed of a desire by experiencing…
The infamous five
Between October 2013 and January 2014, five teenaged boys from Brighton, three of them brothers from a family called Deghayes,…
The sky’s the limit
‘The world,’ Mrs Thatcher was reported to have said, ‘is full of ships.’ With this comment, unlike in many other…
High culture on the hill
With its distinctive hilly site and unusually coherent architecture (significantly, most of it domestic rather than civic), Hampstead has always…
A mad social whirl
The name Arthur Jeffress may not conjure many associations for those not familiar with the London post-war art world, but…
The reluctant style guru
Alexandra Shulman says that she had ‘no desire to write an autobiography’ — so instead she has written about her…
Women’s world
One of life’s perennial questions is what would the world look like if it was ruled by women. It’s an…
Village of the damned peculiar
I doubt whether any book would entice me more than a horrible hybrid of crimefiction, speculative fantasy, weird religion and…
Lose some, win more
‘Beauty is pain,’ the model Gigi Hadid asserts. She’s one of the successful, rich people quizzed by William Leith in…
Streams of consciousness
Geography can be history and history geography — and sometimes the most obvious things are overlooked. Laurence C. Smith’s Rivers…
The great philanderer
Michael Arditti has never held back from difficult or unfashionable subjects. His dozen novels, including the prize-winning Easter, as well…
A time to keep silence
‘You’re never alone with a Strand,’ went the misbegotten advertisement for a new cigarette in 1959. What the copywriter didn’t…
The milk of paradise?
Until fairly recently, all over the western world there were specialised eating places catering largely for Jews who respected the…
Sinister toy story
We often hear that science fiction — or ‘speculative’ fiction, as the buffs prefer — can draw premonitory outlines of…
Nazi on the run
In 1926, while putting in place the repressive laws and decrees that would define his dictatorship, Mussolini appointed a new…
Another man with a mission
How refreshing in a time of general sensitivity to find a book intended to infuriate and debunk. Welcome to the…
Birds of a feather
Philip Hensher describes how Paris became a magnet for literary-minded lesbians in the early 20th century – where they soon caused quite a stir
Smith not Mill
For a long time in this country, conservatism was the political creed that dare not speak its name. The term…
A cascade of wishful thinking
Ah well. It was a nice try. A few years ago I wrote a book called The Great Acceleration, arguing…
Keeping faith
Imagine being on indefinite lockdown, imprisoned in a dark, underground, 6’ x 12’ cell, freezing in winter, boiling in summer…
