Books
John Ruskin: the making of a modern prophet
At the time of his death in 1900, John Ruskin was, according to Andrew Hill, ‘perhaps the most famous living…
How fear and loathing of Nixon sent Hunter S. Thompson crazy
Hunter Stockton Thompson blazed across the republic of American arts and letters for too short a time. When in February…
Seeing and believing: the best spiritual films of Europe’s golden age
The Italian film director Federico Fellini was not known for his piety (far from it), yet towards the end of…
The unearthly powers of the North Pole
Having spent too much of my life at both poles (writing, not sledge-pulling), I know the spells those places cast.…
Fiction for the #MeToo age: Victory, by James Lasdun, reviewed
James Lasdun is my favourite ‘should be famous’ writer, his work extraordinarily taut and compelling. His eye-boggling psychological thrillers are…
The powerful magnetism of James Clerk Maxwell
Chances are, you are reading these words in some room or other. Build a wall down the middle of it,…
Hitting the bull’s-eye: Hark, by Sam Lipsyte, reviewed
This is an ebullient, irreverent and deeply serious novel in the noble tradition of Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis (especially Babbitt…
No escape from grief: Where Reasons End, by Yiyun Li, reviewed
When Yiyun Li first became a writer, she decided that she would leave behind her native language, Chinese, and never…
The brutish origins of British liberalism
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the one to heaven may be surfaced with bad ones.…
Fun at the EU’s expense: The Capital, by Robert Menasse, reviewed
Stendhal likened politics in literature to a pistol-shot in a concert: crude, but compelling. When that politics largely consists of…
Undercurrents
Former Melbourne detective Colin McLaren’s cold case book into the 2009 disappearance of Bob Chappell and the 2010 conviction of…
Fishing for meaning in vanished Doggerland
Somewhere deep in the water-thick layers of Time Song, Julia Blackburn says, funnily, that in Danish, ‘the word for book…
An island’s dark secrets: The Tempest, by Steve Sem-Sandberg, reviewed
‘I should not have gone back to the island but I did it all the same.’ So begins the Swedish…
Kristen Roupenian’s debut short stories fulfil all expectations
Kristen Roupenian’s debut collection, You Know You Want This (Cape, £12.99), comes hotly anticipated. Her short story, ‘Cat Person’, went…
Shakespeare on the beach: Oh I Do Like to Be…, by Marie Phillips, reviewed
The phrase ‘Shakespeare comedy’ is an oxymoron with a long pedigree, one which perhaps stretches back to the late 16th…
Treasures from Ancient Egypt’s wastepaper baskets
In 2016, after some unseemly back-and-forth between the Commons and Lords, it was decided that Acts of Parliament should no…
When kissing in public carried a death sentence
I once threw Tony Parker’s Lighthouse across the fo’c’sle of a ship at sea when I read that his characters…
Travelling by train – with Anna Karenina
Any memoir is a form of double-entry book-keeping, in which what has been lost is reckoned against what has been…
How I tried – and spectacularly failed – to assist my mother’s suicide
‘If your time ain’t come, not even a doctor can kill you’ — so goes the proverb that best echoes…
Twilight in the bayou: The New Iberia Blues, by James Lee Burke, reviewed
The king of crime fiction doesn’t need a crown and sceptre. Every page proclaims his majesty. James Lee Burke has…
The day I woke up… to hear that only Tracey Thorn loved me
It’s unusual for musicians to become writers. The trajectory of yearning is meant to be the other way around. When…
Do we really need to read Isaiah Berlin’s every last word?
This is a fascinating example of a small genre, in which the author decides at an early stage in his…
How Eric Hobsbawm remained a lifelong communist — despite the ‘unpleasant data’
Sir Richard Evans, retired regius professor of history at Cambridge, has always been a hefty historian. The densely compacted facts…
An intellectual dynasty: the Darwins, Wedgwoods and their notable intermarriages
Readers of Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage will remember that its author set out to write a life of…
Demography has become the biggest story on the planet
One of my vanities is that all my novels are different. Yet one astute journalist identified a universal thread: ‘Too…
