Books
Secrets of the secretaries
The minister’s private secretary wrote to another cabinet minister about the previous day’s cabinet meeting: They cannot agree about what…
The mysteries of colour
When Australia imposed generic packaging in its war on cigarettes, there was consumer research into the most deterrent colour. Pantone…
Forbidden love and the beautiful game
Nowadays, most of us living in the liberal West agree that there can never be anything morally wrong with love…
Speckled Footman and Maiden’s Blush
Last year, I attempted to pass through security in an American airport carrying a small black box, containing eight batteries…
Comfort the suffering
If a single book could help you to be kinder and more compassionate, could expand and deepen your understanding of…
Descent into hell
In my work as a reviewer, a small, steady proportion of all the books publishers send me concern the Holocaust.…
Father, son and holy ghost
No disrespect to any of the present incumbents, but Karl Miller (1931–2014) was a literary editor in an age when…
Nothing matters very much
Nothing will come of nothing, said Lear, because he wasn’t familiar with quantum physics. According to our current best theories,…
Carve their names with pride
‘Women,’ Captain Selwyn Jepson, SOE’s senior recruiting officer, once wrote, ‘have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage…
Night of the living dead
On 5 February 1862, the night Abraham Lincoln and his wife gave a lavish reception in the White House, with…
Light in the East
Christopher de Bellaigue, a journalist who has spent much of his working life in the Middle East, has grown tired…
Back with a vengeance
One hour in No. 5 Cheyne Row, Virginia Woolf observed, will tell you more about the Carlyles than all the…
Father, son and holy ghost
No disrespect to any of the present incumbents, but Karl Miller (1931–2014) was a literary editor in an age when…
Light in the East
Christopher de Bellaigue, a journalist who has spent much of his working life in the Middle East, has grown tired…
Nothing matters very much
Nothing will come of nothing, said Lear, because he wasn’t familiar with quantum physics. According to our current best theories,…
Descent into hell
In my work as a reviewer, a small, steady proportion of all the books publishers send me concern the Holocaust.…
Carve their names with pride
‘Women,’ Captain Selwyn Jepson, SOE’s senior recruiting officer, once wrote, ‘have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage…
Back with a vengeance
One hour in No. 5 Cheyne Row, Virginia Woolf observed, will tell you more about the Carlyles than all the…
Night of the living dead
On 5 February 1862, the night Abraham Lincoln and his wife gave a lavish reception in the White House, with…
Comfort the suffering
If a single book could help you to be kinder and more compassionate, could expand and deepen your understanding of…
Short – but far from sweet
Like his Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel, The Sympathisers, the stories in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees are set largely among…
Who will guard the guards?
The history of an army is essentially the history of its deeds. The history of an army within an army…
Undone by love
On the Whitsun weekend of 1935 an art student called Denton Welch was knocked off his bicycle by a car…
It’s in the memes
The greatest of Bach’s 224 cantatas is BWV 109, ‘Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben’. Its subject — the…
Worming out the truth
In Delmore Schwartz’s story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’, a young man dreams he is watching his father and mother’s engagement…
