Books

Ivor Novello as a ‘sympathetic Ripper’ in Hitchcock’s The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog

Jack the Ripper unmasked again

28 November 2015 9:00 am

The Whitechapel Fiend is a psychic conduit for the vilest aspects of Victorian sex and class, and a creature mainly…

Saints and demons

28 November 2015 9:00 am

‘The Australian Labor Party is composed of two main factions,’ writes novelist Shane Maloney, ‘Them and Us’. This truth illuminates…

Treasure

26 November 2015 3:00 pm

Walking down the sands to investigate what they might find, shells or stones, flotsam pieces abandoned by tides, two figures…

Treasure

26 November 2015 3:00 pm

Walking down the sands to investigate what they might find, shells or stones, flotsam pieces abandoned by tides, two figures…

A further selection of books of the year — the best and most overrated of 2015

21 November 2015 9:00 am

A further selection of the best and most overrated books of 2015, chosen by our regular reviewers

The deeper secrets of Britain’s submarines

21 November 2015 9:00 am

The Silent Deep is a compelling and fascinating exposé of a service that for too long has had to remain…

Samuel Palmer’s ‘The Harvest Moon’: ‘the bowed forms of peasants are shadows of divinity’

Samuel Palmer: from long-haired mystic to High Church Tory

21 November 2015 9:00 am

In his youth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) painted like a Romantic poet. The moonlit field of ‘The Harvest Moon’ (1831–32) glows…

Shock and awe in Coventry, 14 November 1940

21 November 2015 9:00 am

On 14 November 1940, at seven in the evening, the Luftwaffe began to bomb Coventry. The skyline turned red like…

Bravery

21 November 2015 9:00 am

I am not ready for the temple but neither am I ready for the market. Leave me, I pray, a…

Perfectly stacked wood, Norwegian-style

Top tips for gardeners — from stroking seedlings to stacking logs

21 November 2015 9:00 am

I spent the summer of 1976 working as a trainee gardener at the Arboretum Kalmthout in Belgium. My employer was…

Rab Butler after the defeat of the Conservatives in 1964. ‘His clothes were truly tragic,’ said Chips Channon

Rab Butler was too indecisive (and badly dressed) to be Prime Minister

21 November 2015 9:00 am

‘The best prime minister we never had’ is not an epithet exclusive to Rab Butler. Widely applied to the late…

Time is of the essence in Helen Simpson’s Cockfosters

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Helen Simpson is not a prolific writer; six slim collections of short stories in 25 years, each timed quinquennially with…

On a British newspaper, Tintin would have been fired years ago

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Reading Tintin when I was a child, in Britain in the 1970s, I always assumed Georges Remi’s creation was just…

The top loo books of 2015

21 November 2015 9:00 am

There is not, sadly, a dedicated Trivia Books section in your local Waterstones, although at this time of year there…

This novel is hilarious (unless you're Richard Dawkins)

21 November 2015 9:00 am

Dan Rhodes apparently had trouble finding a publisher for this short novel, and it’s possible to envisage a certain amount…

The evil genius of Dr Fu Manchu

21 November 2015 9:00 am

In late Victorian south London a ‘lower-middle-class’ boy, Arthur Ward, is lingering over his copy of The Arabian Nights. The…

Bravery

19 November 2015 3:00 pm

I am not ready for the temple but neither am I ready for the market. Leave me, I pray, a…

Bravery

19 November 2015 3:00 pm

I am not ready for the temple but neither am I ready for the market. Leave me, I pray, a…

Books of the Year: the best and most overrated of 2015

14 November 2015 9:00 am

Our regular reviewers choose the best and most overrated books of 2015

There’s nothing wrong with plugging a friend’s book

14 November 2015 9:00 am

The advantage of reviewing books by a friend is that you can invite him out for a walk across the…

Charles Williams: sadist or Rosicrucian saint?

14 November 2015 9:00 am

Charles Williams was a bad writer, but a very interesting one. Most famous bad writers have to settle, like Sidney…

Patti Smith, Amsterdam, 1976

Patti Smith grows old too gracefully

14 November 2015 9:00 am

‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins/ but not mine’: the opening lines of Patti Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses, find a…

John Paul Stapp: the fastest man on earth, who saved millions

14 November 2015 9:00 am

There’s a moment in Craig Ryan’s spectacular biography of John Paul Stapp — the maverick American Air Force doctor who,…

Franz Marangolo’s advertisement , 1950 (From The Life Negroni)

A soothing Negroni for la dolce vita

14 November 2015 9:00 am

The first draft of the famous story was called ‘A Martini as Big as the Ritz’. That’s not true, but…

Jonathan Coe’s raucous social satire smoulders with anger

14 November 2015 9:00 am

When Rachel, one of the unreliable narrators of Number 11, wants to ‘go back to the very beginning’, she starts…