Books
The world’s melting pot
Every history of London — and there have been very many — has looked at the importance for the city…
A feminist awakening
For those of us with nagging doubts about the value of literary biography, books that show the biographer at work…
Love lies bleeding
Dear Life arrives at a time when the public appetite for the personal accounts of medical insiders shows no sign…
Tales of the Underground
Ta-Nehisi Coates’s debut novel transports us to antebellum Virginia, when the tobacco wealth of years gone by is dwindling, due…
Out of order
In his autobiography, John Bercow takes his peerage as a given. But that might be scuppered by accusations of bullying, says Lynn Barber
Escape into war
What compelled three well-known British writers to leave their homes and travel 6,000 miles to participate in a nasty late-19th-century…
Cooking up miracles
Georgina Landemare cooked for the Churchill family in all their kitchens, during the 1930s and 1940s. She got as close…
Crowning glories
When an American describes a woman as wearing a ‘Park Avenue Helmet’ you know exactly what is meant. This is…
A matter of detail
This is a very nuanced and subtle novel by Philip Hensher, which manages the highwire act of treating its characters…
Acting the part
Actress is the novel Anne Enright has been rehearsing since her first collection of stories, The Portable Virgin (1991). It…
He who dared
Of the many bleak moments that have lodged in my mind since reading this extraordinary book the most unshakeable is…
Homage to Pieter the great
There is a vogue at the moment for books which use art as a vehicle for examining the writer’s wider…
From the lake of dreams…
Kapka Kassabova’s previous travel book, Border, was rightly acclaimed and won several prizes. The author travelled to the edge of…
… to endless wakefulness
The insomniac may come to dread the night’s solitude, but the next day poses the greater challenge. That’s when you…
Hair down in a sea of chignons
The January dance stage can be a site of naked contrition. Like a tippler grasping at green juice after a…
The heroine of the plains
Calamity Jane’s legend as brave frontierswoman, crack shot and compassionate nurse to the wounded was nurtured largely by herself. The truth, says Sam Leith, was dismayingly different
The emperor’s new clothes
In 1935 the troops of Benito Mussolini’s sinister-clownish Roman Empire II invaded Ethiopia, in large part out of spite for…
The downside of mindfulness
Way back in 1996 Norman E. Sjoman published a book called The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace, in which…
Obscure objects of desire
In the world of classic cars, barn-finds sometimes do occur. An old Mercedes Gullwing might be discovered under tarps and…
School of hard knocks
Although widely read in her native Hungary, Magda Szabó, who died in 2007, did not gain international acclaim until the…
A masterpiece of neo-noir
In one of the most frequently quoted lines of post-war European cinema, a character in the 1976 Wim Wenders film…
Buns in the oven
Does a practical joke differ from a hoax? It could be a matter of scale. Anyone can deploy a whoopee…
Life on a tightrope
The journalist Deepa Anappara turns to crime with her debut novel, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line (Chatto & Windus,…
Truth, lies and dirty money
A.D. Miller’s gripping new book is set largely during Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution, which Miller covered as a journalist. Ten…
A star that waxed and waned
The story of how Hugo Vickers eventually tracked down the former Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough is almost as fascinating…
