Books
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…
The cheapest, deadliest weapon
Nothing prepared Antony Beevor for this devastating exposé of the systematic use of rape in war and ethnic cleansing
Going round in circles
Some years ago I participated in a late-night Radio 3 show on exploration and travel. When I left the studio…
Can we have a pet instead?
When you’re not a mother it’s hard to imagine what motherhood is like. Anyone you know who becomes one assures…
Completely unhinged
Faced with Marina Lewycka’s new novel, it’s tempting to say that The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid…
Period piece
There’s something — isn’t there? — of the literary also-ran about Graham Swift. He was on Granta’s first, influential Best…
An Ethiopian Exodus
Menachem Begin was Israel’s most reviled and misunderstood prime minister. Reviled by Britain for his paramilitary activities against the British…
The prize of the skies
The art of falconry is more than 3,000 years old and possibly as popular now as at any time. Its…
The great taboo-breaker
In 1983 I was sent to New York to interview Johnny Rotten and I took the opportunity to call on…
Not a party person
This book is a rather startling depiction of Hugh Trevor-Roper’s involvement with the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), his sponsored…
The inside story
As an inmate, Chris Atkins discovered just how violent and chaotic prison life is. His diaries highlight a national scandal – and the dangerous incompetence of the Ministry of Justice, says Will Heaven
A princely paragon
This is a giant Teutonic forest of a book, to be progressed through with determination as if by seasoned infantry;…
The mesh of life
Lizzie, the narrator of Jenny Offill’s impressive third novel Weather, is ‘enmeshed’ with her brother, according to her psychologist-cum-meditation teacher.…
Don’t judge an album by its cover
Everything about Kraftwerk was odd. They had no front man, they seemed to play no instruments and their strange, electronic…
The restless spirit of the Enlightenment
Emily Thomas is a distinguished academic philosopher who has ‘spent a lot of time by herself getting lost around the…
Raw reality TV
The context for The Hungry and the Fat, Timur Vermes’s new satirical novel, is not as far-fetched as all that.…
Back to the future
Between 1923 and 1931 the publisher Routledge produced ‘Today and Tomorrow’, a series of 110 short books by intellectual luminaries…
The white man’s a burden
The scope of Petina Gappah’s impressive novel is laid out in the prologue: the death of the Victorian explorer David…
