Books
An idyllic vision of the future
The French economist, statistician and polymath Thomas Piketty sprang to fame in 2013 with a daunting tome, Capital in the…
Be not so fearful
Here is a sobering thought for anyone involved in the world of finance. Those who charge interest when they lend…
Where the soul sits alone
If you seek out the home of an admired writer, you might find, as with Ernest Hemingway’s house in Havana,…
Strategies for survival
Late in his life, I asked my uncle René about his exploits in wartime France. What I knew was that…
The West is failing to rise to the challenge of coronavirus
Having apparently shaken off the first phase of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda machine is now in…
A resounding success
Gustav Mahler was a passionate enthusiast for the colossal in music. Even so, his mighty eighth symphony stands apart, says Philip Hensher
Mad, bad and dangerous
Brian De Palma brings his film director’s eye to Are Snakes Necessary? (Hard Case, £16.99), written in collaboration with the…
Straight to number one
Pop music has always been, to those who love it, to some degree tribal or factional; fans like to carve…
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…
