Books
Aussie exceptionalism
It would have once been uncontroversial to suggest nations have characteristics that not only distinguish them from other countries, but…
Aussie exceptionalism
It would have once been uncontroversial to suggest nations have characteristics that not only distinguish them from other countries, but…
Chinese whispers
Peter Ho Davies’s second novel, The Fortunes, is a beautifully crafted study, in four parts, of the history of the…
The key to a hidden kingdom
It’s a modern pastime to hypothesise about what makes a good relationship. One evening not long ago in a Berlin…
A view to a kill
A certain sort of male novelist will always aspire to be Joseph Conrad. The seedy cosmopolitanism of his fiction and…
Tales out of school
At first glance Sean O’Brien’s new novel appears to focus on England’s devotion to the past. Even its title carries…
Girls about town
On 8 June 1920 an old beggar woman sat against a wall in Kingsway holding a mongrel in her arms…
Crying Wolfe
He might be 85 but Tom Wolfe is going strong with a new book and a dustjacket photo that still…
Doctor who?
On 25 July 1865, during a heatwave, Dr James Barry died of dysentery in his London lodgings. A charwoman came…
No happy endings
Between agreeing to review this book and receiving it, I got worried. Like many, I adore Doctor Zhivago with its…
Gale-force lyricism
Centuries before their footballers learned giant-slaying ways, Icelanders knew how to startle the world with tall stories. In the moonscape…
All about C
In March 1981 Margaret Thatcher went to the hospital bedside of Maurice Oldfield, the former head of the Secret Intelligence…
The Capability controversy
In a piece of light verse from the 1770s ‘Dame Nature’ — out strolling ‘one bright day’ — bumps into…
White trash
Hillbilly Elegy is an extended meditation on cultural and social capital. It asks seriously – and answers truthfully – this…
Seeing red
Early on in his excellent and protean biography of a colour, Spike Bucklow quotes Goethe, writing in 1809: Every rope…
An age-old problem
With a title like A Beautiful Young Wife, this is of course about the decline of an older husband. Professor…
Part sermon, part crossword puzzle
The Schooldays of Jesus is not, as it happens, about the schooldays of Jesus. It is the Man Booker-nominated sequel…
Playing for high stakes
Now that even candidates for President of the United States can rise up from the undead dregs of reality television,…
Agents of enterprise
A teenager in the second decade of the Cold War, my father was taught to play snooker by a KGB…
The original and the copyist
Architecture is sometimes described as the second oldest profession, but often — in both theory and practice — it competes…
Ways out of recovery
Perhaps because so many of them are former drunks and junkies, ‘addiction experts’ are touchy people. Often they don’t like…
The age of accusation
Mark Lawson’s latest novel, set in Britain in the recent past, presents us with a nation in the grip of…
To zyxst and back again
What the Great Eastern was to Brunel, the New English Dictionary was to James Murray (1837–1915) — an unequalled task…
The power of music and storytelling
Madeleine Thien’s third novel, recently long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, begins in Vancouver with Marie, who, like the author,…
A meeting of two minds
This lovely, modest and precise book tells the story of the most productive friendship among the modernists, and the most…
