Books
The crime of passion that kept the nation enthralled
No matter how exquisitely English —gobbets of blood amid the fireplace ornaments — murder annihilates meaning. Even when the motive…
Norfolk may be flat, but it’s never boring
Francis Pryor claims he would be a rich man if every person who told him that the Fens were ‘flat…
Erotic longings that left me cold
The epigraph of Three Women comes from Baudelaire’s ‘Windows’: ‘What one can see out in the sunlight is always less…
Eternal truths: Night Boat to Tangier, by Kevin Barry, reviewed
It lives in me still, the intense thrill when, as a child, I would listen to the Irish people around…
Bohemians rhapsodising: the favourite haunts of writers and artists
Mary Ann Caws, a retired professor of English and French literature at the City University of New York, published her…
Out of sight, out of mind
Yoko Ogawa’s new novel takes us to a Japanese island where things keep disappearing: ribbons, birds, musical instruments, fruit. People,…
In praise of the semicolon, a most maligned punctuation mark
Now, how shall I start this review? I loved this book. I really did. (Too abrupt.) I loved this book,…
Web of deceit: disinformation could prove the most powerful weapon of all
We could begin almost anywhere. But let’s start in Ukraine, with Babar Aliev. Babar is a former gang leader who…
Head to Berlin to hear nightingales sing
In a sense, the song of the bird in the title of this short, hugely thoughtful and fascinating book is…
The Orwellian horror of the Mr Men books
It is bad enough when we learn that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. But later in life there comes another trauma,…
Capers in crime: Life for Sale, by Yukio Mishima, reviewed
Few biographies are quite as impressive as Yukio Mishima’s. One of Japan’s most famous authors, he wrote 80 plays and…
Alas, poor Hamlet — now presumed to be overweight
Do you regard fat as a noun, a food substance all humans eat and need? Or as an adjective, denoting…
A picture of rural Kentucky: Stand by Me, by Wendell Berry, reviewed
Anyone picking up a book by Wendell Berry, whether it be fiction, essays or a collection of his lucid and…
How to interrogate a murderer
This is horrible. But it’s a book by Mark Bowden, who wrote Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo, so it’s…
Will Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ ever be finished?
Robert Caro, at the age of 83, continues to work full-time on his grand inquiry into the nature of political…
Searching in vain for the ‘soul’ of modern Russia
It would be hard to have better travel-writer credentials than Sara Wheeler. Here the author of The Magnetic North and…
America’s brutal borstals: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead, reviewed
Novelists will always be interested in enclosed communities — or the ‘total institution’, as sociologists say. When you separate a…
Kayaking solo from Shetland to the Channel
After kayaking solo in a November storm to a square mile of rock called Eilean a’Chleirich in the Summer Isles…
They just keep rolling along: the astonishing durability of the Rolling Stones
At the end of 1969, teenage Rolling Stones fans reading the new Fab 208 annual could be forgiven for thinking…
Aung San Suu Kyi couldn’t save Burma — but tourism can
My uncle Edward did not like talking about his service in Burma during the second world war. When I asked…
Fun and games: I Am Sovereign, by Nicola Barker, reviewed
In 2017’s Goldsmiths Prize-winning novel H(A)PPY, Nicola Barker strewed pages with multicoloured text. The Cauliflower, her joyful previous offering, employed…
Where would ballet be without Marius Petipa?
Should the man on the Clapham omnibus ever turn his mind to ballet, he is bound to envisage the work…
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The dark side of Whitby: Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky and other crime novels reviewed
Andrew Martin continues his quest to create uniquely interesting crime novels in The Winker (Corsair, £16.99). Lee Jones is a…
Angel or demon? The Carer, by Deborah Moggach, reviewed
You might think The Carer rather an unpromising title, but Deborah Moggach’s book delivers a wickedly witty entertainment. Towards the…
How Klaus Fuchs’s treachery may have averted Armageddon
When Klaus Fuchs started passing atomic secrets to the KGB, he changed the course of world events. Forget about Philby…
