Books
The thrill of living dangerously inspires the latest first novels
Here come three novels marketed as debuts but written by authors with some sort of previous, be it in short…
Peter Carey’s latest novel is a merciless excavation of Australian history
More than 25 years ago, Peter Carey co-wrote one of the most audacious road movies ever made, Wim Wenders’s Until…
Did the fabled Phoenicians ever actually exist?
So the Phoenicians never existed. Herodotus, that unreliable old fibber, made it all up in the Histories. Is this really…
What do Walt Whitman, Jackson Pollock and Jimi Hendrix have in common?
On 3 September 1968, Allen Ginsberg appeared on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. Buckley exposed Ginsberg’s politics as fatuous —…
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house of horrors on the prairies
In 1932, the Daily Plainsman of Huron, South Dakota, ran a feature about a local woman convalescing in hospital. Grace…
Six of the best short story collections
While the short story is currently under-going one of its periods of robust, if not rude, health, its two dominant…
How could anyone possibly want a Roundhead ancestor?
The late Michael Foot used to say that the first thing he needed to know about a new acquaintance was,…
Photographing the extraordinary ordinariness of 1950s America
The career of the photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank stands in direct antithesis to the characteristics of his native Switzerland.…
Nan Shepherd’s lonely uphill struggle
‘It’s a grand thing to get leave to live’, perhaps the most famous line Nan Shepherd wrote, is carved in…
Describing the indescribable: news from the Western Front
At the close of the 1970s, I found a selection of postcards in an antique shop which had been sent…
It’s time to rehabilitate Ulysses S. Grant — scorned hero of the Civil War
Last year, more than 6,000,000 people visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. By contrast, barely 80,000 went to General…
The best way to see India — by train
‘I went to a restaurant the other day called Taste of the Raj. The waiter hit me with a stick…
Spot the classical music
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The history of the Bank of England would make a marvellous musical
Hamilton, created by the remarkable Lin-Manuel Miranda, has brought the financial musical to the London stage: a serious biography of…
The hopes and fears of Bethlehem
Before a certain baby was born there, Bethlehem was famous for its sweet water. Shepherd boys like the young David,…
What makes a semi-police state happy?
This charming collection of individual photographic portraits of Bhutanese citizens intentionally highlights the two central features of the kingdom today:…
Anthologies to bring comfort and joy
John Julius Norwich loves Christmas dearly. ‘I just wish it didn’t come round about every three months,’ he says. I…
Did a vodka ban precipitate the Russian Revolution?
It’s one of the more mysterious features of human history that people of every era and in almost every place…
True, dogged likenesses
There are currently 151,000,000 photos on Instagram tagged #Dog which is 14,000,000 more than those tagged #Cat. The enormous number…
Royalist recipes for surviving the civil war
Halfway through Lady Fanshawe’s Receipt Book Lucy Moore takes a moment to regret the vast tracts of the past that…
Why is America so inhibited about sex toys?
It’s hard not to love a book that starts with its author fearing a police sting while flogging sex toys…
Bryant’s tyrants: Chris Bryant bashes the British aristocracy
I rashly discarded this book’s dustjacket when I received it, and thus saw only the unlettered cover, a faded photograph…
The vibrant tradition of English folk song
After hundreds of densely packed pages on folk song in England — a subject for which I share Steve Roud’s…
A master of Norwegian wood
Ole Thorstensen has been a carpenter for 25 years. A master craftsman, in fact. He is busy working on a…
Writers’ letters: Anthony Trollope
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