Books
Solving the mystery of my mother’s kidnap
At first glance, Laura Cumming’s memoir On Chapel Sands begins with what appears to be a happy ending. On an…
Creatures of the night: why do we find them irresistible?
When it was recently announced that Robert Pattinson, who played the vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films, had secured…
Desperate souls: Travellers, by Helon Habila, reviewed
Death by water haunts the stories of Africans in Europe that flow through this fourth novel by Helon Habila. From…
A drag army in waiting: This Brutal House, by Niven Govinden, reviewed
Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set in the demi-monde of the New York vogue ball. This is an organised,…
For a passionate ecologist, Barry Lopez burns a lot of oil
It is more than a generation since the appearance of Barry Lopez’s classic Arctic Dreams. That book’s effortless integration of…
From bibliomania to kleptomania: the serious crimes of book lovers
In the spring of 1998, Rolling Stones fans in Germany were disappointed to hear that the band had been forced…
The Kan-do spirit: Under Red Skies, by Karoline Kan, reviewed
The defining feature of Chinese millennials is not Instagram, avocado on toast or propertylessness. Born in the early years of…
Fluttering to extinction: the tragedy of Britain’s butterflies
In 1979, despite the best efforts of scientists for more than a century, a butterfly called the British Large Blue…
Getting to grips with rocket science
Now that we are stupidly rendering Earth almost entirely uninhabitable by many species including our own (through overcrowding, failing political…
The free-spirited sisters who galvanised the Bloomsbury Group
It was high time we had a proper look at the four beautiful, original Olivier sisters. Hitherto, with one exception,…
History is made from ideas — but are ideas becoming history?
Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if…
Polari, the secret gay argot, is making a surprising comeback
Imagine you’re a gay man living in the year 1950. Not unnaturally, you would like to meet another gay man.…
An education in love: City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert, reviewed
One of the chief regrets of book-loving women of my age — and a surprising number of men — is…
The snake-oil salesmen who prey on schizophrenics
Schizophrenia is the psychiatric illness about which the most misconceptions abound. It’s not so much the ‘negative’ symptoms that cause…
The sinister strains of English folk music
With public life increasingly a din of personalised ringtones and phone chatter, we crave silence. Acoustic ecologists speak of ‘ear…
Pigeons are plucky and loyal — so don’t go poisoning them in the park
Growing up as a rootless army brat in bases home and abroad, I would listen in appalled delight to my…
Entertaining Iris Murdoch – for months on end
If you know your Peter Conradi from your Peter J. Conradi, you’ll also know that the former is foreign editor…
Haunting and hallucinatory: hospital poems from Hugo Williams
Hugo Williams’s wryly candid reports from the front lines of sex and family life are a perennial delight. Often timeless,…
How does today’s world compare with Orwell’s nightmare vision?
Apart from a passionate relationship with the common toad, what do George Orwell and David Attenborough have in common? H.G.…
Heroism in a hopeless cause: why the crusades remain fascinating
The crusades are part of everyone’s mental image of the Middle Ages. They extended, in one form or another, from…
Mystery in the Sundarbans: Gun Island, by Amitav Ghosh, reviewed
Meet Deen Datta, a nervous, practical and cautious man, born and brought up in Calcutta, who now lives in Brooklyn,…
Naomi Wolf is holed below the waterline
What is it about Naomi Wolf that inspires such venom? Perhaps that she’s American, brash, media-savvy and not averse to…
Searching for Coco on the Côte d’Azur
Anne de Courcy, an escapee from tabloid journalism, has become a polished historian of British high society in the 20th…
Gunning for Narendra Modi
K.S. Komireddi sets out to establish his secular credentials before he sets up his primary argument: which is that India’s…
Is one of history’s most rousing speeches apocryphal?
As rousing death-and-glory speeches go, it is one of the best. With a besieging Roman army only hours from storming…
