Books
The murderer who got away – and the woman who died in pursuit
This true-crime narrative ought, by rights, to be broken backed, in two tragic ways. One is that the serial attacker…
Today’s pirate gold is the Patagonian toothfish
Sea Shepherd is a radical protest group made famous — or notorious — by the American cable TV series Whale…
In 1968, even supercilious Boston was ankle-deep in LSD
‘And this is good old Boston/, The home of the bean and the cod,’ John Collins Bossidy quipped in 1910,…
Who is monitoring the 200 million videos available daily on YouTube?
On 25 April 2005, Jawed Karim sent an email to his friends announcing the launch of a new video site…
A nightmare scenario in the city of dreaming spires
‘Dreaming spires’? Yes, but sometimes there are nightmares. Brian Martin, awarded the MBE for services to English literature, is at…
Quantum physics made fun
We all know that physics and maths can be pretty weird, but these three books tackle their mind-bending subjects in…
Frankenstein’s monster is more frightening than ever
On the wall of her tumbledown house in central Baghdad, an elderly Christian widow named Elishva has a beloved icon…
What did the Romans ever do for us when it comes to viticulture?
Taste has a well-noted ability to evoke memory, so it is curious how infrequently most wine writers mine their pasts…
Lucy Mangan has enough comic energy to power the National Grid
After three hot-water-bottle-warmed evenings of highly satisfying bedtime reading, I can confirm that, even in a world where Francis Spufford’s…
Our gallant second world war pigeons have been unjustly ridiculed
Operation Columba was one of the most secretive arms of British Intelligence during the second world war. Between April 1941…
The Maigret novels are perfect for the train. Just don’t let their cynicism blight your view of your fellow passengers
Donald E. Westlake wrote crime books that were funny, light and intricate. Help I Am Being Held Prisoner (Hard Case…
Was Ada Lovelace the true founder of Silicon Valley?
It’s more than 160 years since the death of the computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage’s ‘enchantress of numbers’ and…
Napoleon’s dazzling victories invited a devastating backlash
On 20 July 1805, just three months before the battle of Trafalgar destroyed a combined French and Spanish fleet, the…
Thomas Paine: spendthrift, scrounger and polemicist of genius
‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ Ronald Reagan made this most unconservative of lines…
Why I now find listening to Beethoven nauseating
Stephen Bernard has led an institutionalised life. Behind the doors of the church presbytery, at public school, on hospital wards…
The CIA, the Vietnam deserters and the aptly named Operation Chaos
‘Keep my name out of it’, was the fairly standard reply when Matthew Sweet started researching the story of the…
Only an idiot would choose to live at any other time than the present
Steven Pinker’s new book is a characteristically fluent, decisive and data-rich demonstration of why, given the chance to live at…
The spectacular suicide mission of the world’s greatest battleship
In April 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato — the largest and heaviest in history — embarked upon a suicide mission.…
Jessie Greengrass’s Sight is unashamedly philosophical
The precarious stasis of late pregnancy offers the narrator of Jessie Greengrass’s exceptional first novel a space — albeit an…
The miseries of diplomatic life: heat, bedbugs and endless cocktail parties
The arrival at a new foreign posting for a junior diplomat’s wife in the first half of the last century…
Every day is mother’s day for writers: most have strong feelings about their mothers, though not always of love
You attempt to write a review with a stiff dose of objectivity, but it’s hard not to start with a…
Shadows of the past are ominously present in a trio of memorable first novels
The Shangri-Las’ song ‘Past, Present and Future’ divides a life into three, Beethoven-underpinned phases: before, during and after. Each section…
Doris Lessing: from champion of free love to frump with a bun
‘I am interested only in stretching myself, in living as fully as I can.’ Lara Feigel begins her thoughtful book…
Biography is a thoroughly reprehensible genre
I saw a biopic about Morecambe and Wise recently. The actors impersonating the comedians were not a patch on the…
From Louis XIV to the Shah of Iran: celebrities under the surgeon’s knife
Powerful memoirs by such eloquent doctors as Oliver Sacks, Atul Gawande, Henry Marsh, Gabriel Weston and Paul Kalanithi have whipped…
