Books
What does John Gray’s anti-atheism amount to?
K. Chesterton, in one of his wise and gracious apothegms, once wrote that ‘When Man ceases to worship God he…
Our sheltered lives have made us overly fearful: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness reviewed
In her keynote lecture for a conference on ‘The Muse and the Market’ in 2015 Aminatta Forna mounted a powerful…
There’s much of Astrid Lindgren in the carrot-haired rebel Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Longstocking is a nine-year-old girl who lives alone with a monkey and horse in a cottage called Villa Villekulla…
Oddballs and lefties
Ah, populism: is it a fulsome democratic expression of giving people what they want or merely join-the-dots fear-mongering? Bit of…
The codes and codswallop surrounding Leonardo da Vinci
‘If you look at walls soiled with a variety of stains or at stones with variegated patterns,’ Leonardo da Vinci…
The changing face of war and heroism
On War and Writing by Samuel Hynes is hardly about war at all. There is little about combat here, or…
Henry Miller — pornographer or prophet?
Few writers seem less deserving of resuscitation than Henry Miller. When the Scottish poet and novelist John Burnside was asked…
Six wintry days in Saratoga Springs: Upstate by James Wood reviewed
Alan Querry, the central figure in James Wood’s second novel, is someone who, in his own words, doesn’t ‘think about…
Rose Tremain’s account of a loveless childhood leaves one aching for more
1991, the Harbourfront Literary Festival in Toronto. The novelist Rose Tremain and the South African writer Carolyn Slaughter are enjoying…
Packing away my 35,000 books was like writing my own obituary
Alberto Manguel is a kind of global Reader Laureate: he is reading’s champion, its keenest student and most zealous proselytiser,…
If you’re planning to become a racehorse trainer, here’s how to do it
With the Cheltenham Festival been and gone, all eyes are on Aintree and the Grand National. These courses feature in…
How one man took on the French betting system — and kept winning against the odds
About a third of the way through this book I worked out that I had an unbeatable system for winning…
It’s impossible to live up to the expectations of motherhood
In a 1974 interview celebrating the quarter century since the publication of her classic The Second Sex (1949), Simone de…
A hymn to self-loathing: Tibor Fischer’s How to Rule the World reviewed
Tibor Fischer has a track record with humour. His first novel, the Booker shortlisted Under the Frog, takes its title…
Give me Shakespeare’s Macbeth over Jo Nesbo’s any day
It must have seemed a good idea to someone: commissioning a range of well-known novelists to ‘reimagine Shakespeare’s plays for…
Sober liberal
Australia has a rich heritage of nineteenth century classical liberalism. But that history has been almost completely lost in the…
1968 and the summer of our discontent
’68 will do as shorthand. Most of ’68, as it were, didn’t happen in 1968. It was, at most, the…
Free as a bird: the beauty and exhilaration of gliding
Over the years I’ve been in touch with a number of middle-aged professionals who, despite the success they’ve found in…
Spend, spend, spend at the court of Philip IV of Spain
‘Nine hours,’ boasted my friend the curator about his trip to the Prado. Nine! Two hours is my upper limit…
For peat’s sake: Britain’s bogs and moorland in crisis
In 2008, the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie characterised the typical exponent of modern nature writing as ‘the lone enraptured male’.…
How can we know what dead people want?
In 1999, Patrick Hemingway published True at First Light, a new novel by his father Ernest. In his role as…
Alarm bells ring when I read about grown women and dolls
Mona — single, childless, pushing 60 — sells wooden dolls made by a carpenter friend, which she delicately costumes from…
Meeting the last Cuban fisherman to have known Ernest Hemingway
In Havana, one week before President Obama unthawed half a century of cold relations with Cuba, I talked to the…
The swallows that herald spring
Sweet lovers, Shakespeare reminds us, love the spring. How can they not? All that wonderfully wanton colour, all that sensual…
Why do the Japanese despise sex?
There are two sorts of people: those who can’t wait to grow up, and those who wish they never had…
