Books
‘The finest architectural delusion in the world’
It took the madness of genius to build such a wonderful impossibility. Patrick Marnham reviews a delightful new literary guide to Venice
Jeremy Thorpe gets off Scott-free
Appropriately for the dog days of British politics, there’s plenty of canine activity in this neatly groomed account of the…
The art critic who loved to provoke the Establishment
Richard Dorment doesn’t do whimsy. Or Stanley Spencer. He’s a fan of Cy Twombly and Brice Marden, Gilbert and George…
Disgusted of London - A.L. Kennedy's Serious Sweet reviewed
Twenty-four long hours, two lonely people, one city in decline. This is the premise of A.L. Kennedy’s new novel Serious…
‘Thou shalt commit adultery’
Jesuits, the leading apologists for Rome and Catholic revival in Elizabethan England, cast a long shadow over the paranoid post-Armada…
The deceptive charm of the bourgeoisie
Glimpsing the title of Lynsey Hanley’s absorbing new book as it fell out of the jiffy bag, I found myself…
Enver Hoxha: Stalin’s devilish disciple
In his final public appearance, the Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha addressed a Tirana crowd to commemorate the capital’s liberation from…
T. rex: the greatest celebrity of all time
Tyrannosaurus rex is the greatest celebrity of all time. The 68–66 million-year-old carnivore is far older than any actor or…
Andrey Kurkov’s The Bickford Fuse is a satirical masterpiece
Whimsy, satire and deadpan humour: welcome to the world of Andrey Kurkov. If you know Kurkov’s work, The Bickford Fuse…
Florence's black Medici prince: a drama worthy of Shakespeare
The life – and violent death – of a very unusual Renaissance prince has Alex von Tunzelmann enthralled
A bleak future — without cabbages or kings
One happy aspect of Lionel Shriver’s peek into the near future (the novel opens in 2029) is the number of…
Marina Lewycka’s Granny steals the show
Marina Lewycka’s latest happy-go-lucky tale of migrant folk in Britain takes a remark by the modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin as…
Steve Jones’s chaotic theory of history
‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Philip Larkin’s most famous line has appeared in the Spectator repeatedly, and…
How we went from mere betting to gaming the world
If I prang your car, we can swap insurance details. In the past, it would have been necessary for you…
Kathmandu — or don’t
Although Nepal’s earthquake last April visited our television screens with images of seismic devastation, the disaster has probably had little…
Losers in the game of life
Mysteries abound here — enigmas of identity and betrayal, long-buried secret transactions leading to quests — for a lost child,…
Out of time and harsh: the historical treatment of the female composer
Just a few weeks ago, Germany’s VAN magazine published an interview with the composer Olga Neuwirth. In it she describes…
The hip-hop intellectual from inner-city Baltimore
The author of the bestseller Between the World and Me and recipient of a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ last year, Ta-Nehisi…
Emil Zátopek: a legend from athletics’ golden age of innocence
The story of the Czechoslovak runner Emil Zátopek is a tale from athletics’ age of innocence. Without the aid of…
A love letter to all great dictionaries
Asked to name a reference book, you may well choose the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. But…
Existentialism and taboo sex scream of youth trying too hard
How many debut collections does it take to stand up to one of the most accomplished short-story writers of the…
Oliver Goldsmith: the most fascinating bore in literature
On 10 April 1772, the biographer James Boswell recorded in his diary that he had hugged himself with pleasure on…
Books and arts opener
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The sentimental socialist
Having done something similar myself, I wondered how Bill Shorten would handle the challenge of a campaign biography. My book,…
Why we love unfinished art
An unfinished painting can provide a startling glimpse of the artist at work. But the common tendency to prefer it to a finished work is being taken to extremes, says Philip Hensher
