Books
Lost in allegory: The Wall, by John Lanchester, reviewed
Dystopian fiction continues to throng the bookshelves, for all the world as though we weren’t living in a dystopia already,…
Death of a rock star: Slow Motion Ghosts, by Jeff Noon, reviewed
Here is a novel set in the no man’s land between past and present, a fertile and constantly shifting territory…
Pitches in the boardroom: football’s future assured
This is a story of resurrection. A mere three decades ago, club football in England was a professional game largely…
Investigative journalists: new crime fiction reviewed
Despite being well-travelled as the BBC’s world affairs editor, John Simpson doesn’t roam far from home in his spy thriller,…
Hungary is being led once again down a dangerous nationalistic path
Norman Stone has already written, with a brilliant blend of humour, understanding and scepticism, histories of the Eastern Front, Turkey,…
Should William Penn be shaking in his grave?
The ultimate driving force of William Penn’s adult life is inaccessible, as the Quaker phrase ‘Inner Light’ suggests. While a…
Partying with John and Yoko: The Dakota Winters, by Tom Barbash, reviewed
Tom Barbash’s dark and humorous second novel takes a risk by combining invented and real characters. I feared nagging doubts…
Nazi caricatures: The Order of the Day, by Éric Vuillard, reviewed
There was a time when you read French literary novels in order to cultivate a certain kind of sophisticated suspicion.…
It’s a lifetime of hard work being an artist
Once, when a number of Royal Academicians were invited to Buckingham Palace, the celebrated abstract painter John Hoyland (1934–2011) found…
Love in a time of people-trafficking: Among the Lost, by Emiliano Monge, reviewed
From the very first pages of Among the Lost, we’re engaged, and compromised. Estela and Epitafio are our main anchors,…
Make it a new year’s resolution to be less active
As a boy Josh Cohen was passive, dopey and given to daydreaming. Now a practising psychoanalyst and a professor of…
Small but deadly: postcards that fuelled the Russian Revolution
In this handsomely illustrated book Tobie Mathew makes a case for the lowly postcard’s role in the politicisation of pre-revolutionary…
Catchwords for today — what’s in, what’s out
The mid-term elections in the US, when Democrats took over Congress, were hailed as a victory for ‘progressives’, while David…
What did the Romans ever do for London?
When Bishop Guy of Amiens looked across the Channel in the 11th century he saw ‘teeming London [which] shines bright.…
An Igbo Paradise Lost: An Orchestra of Minorities, by Chigozie Obioma, reviewed
Nurture hatred in your heart and you will keep ‘an unfed tiger in a house full of children’. A man…
Life and death in 1970s Belfast: For the Good Times, by David Keenan, reviewed
David Keenan’s debut novel, This is Memorial Device, about a small town in Lanarkshire and its post-punk scene, showed that…
France gets a taste for Bacon
The case of Michael Peppiatt is a curious one. He first met Francis Bacon when he was an undergraduate at…
In Epping Forest’s dark undergrowth
In this current era of identity politics and a more fluid approach to gender and sexuality amongst a younger generation,…
Of the people
This must be the first occasion when a book on politics, written in Australia, has been listed among the year’s…
How Calouste Gulbenkian became the richest man in the world
Whenever I find myself visiting some great historic house, I always like to break off from gawping at tapestries to…
Let there be night: adventures in the dark
Edward S. Curtis’s 1914 photograph, ‘Dancing to Restore an Eclipsed Moon’, shows the Kwakiutl tribe of North American Indians circling…
The intoxicating languor of the Caribbean
Ian Fleming’s voodoo extravaganza Live and Let Die finds James Bond in rapt consultation of The Traveller’s Tree by Patrick…
The absurd struggle to claim ownership of Kafka
Benjamin Balint’s Kafka’s Last Trial is a legal and philosophical black comedy of the first water, complete, like all the…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
The age of chivalry was an age of devilry
Agatha Christie’s spirit must be loving this poisonous new historical entertainment. Eleanor Herman has already enjoyed the success of Sex…
