Books
This way to a parallel universe, via north Oxford
As a novelist, Iain Pears doesn’t repeat himself, and he gives with a generous hand. In Arcadia, he provides a…
Augustus: here was a Caesar! Or at least his great-nephew
It’s strange that tourists rarely visit the most famous site in Roman history. The spot in Pompey’s assembly hall where…
Introducing the silent narrator
Andrew Miller’s seventh novel, and the first since Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year award, is an…
Bacon on the side: the great painter’s drinking partner tells all
When Michael Peppiatt met Francis Bacon in 1963 to interview him for a student magazine, the artist was already well-established,…
What it took to wage holy war, Medieval style
For most of history, religion and war have been the most powerful social instincts of mankind and its chief collective…
The facts behind France’s most potent modern myth
Patrick Marnham unravels some of the powerful, often conflicting myths surrounding the French Resistance
Ghosts of the past haunt Pat Barker’s bomb-strewn London
If the early Martin Amis is instantly recognisable by way of its idiosyncratic slang (‘rug-rethink’, ‘going tonto’ etc) then the…
The dangerous red-headed league
‘Gentlemen prefer blondes,’ Anita Loos pronounced, ‘but gentlemen marry brunettes.’ Quite what they do with redheads she never revealed (and…
Another ‘big book’ — with big problems — from Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Purity, comes with great expectations. Its author’s awareness of this fact is signalled by a series…
The drama of St Crispian’s Day: Shakespeare got it right
Charles VI of France died on 21 October 1422. He had been intermittently mad for most of his long reign,…
The times really were a-changin’ — when Dylan electrified his fans
Five songs, only three of which were amplified. Thirty-five minutes, including interruptions. That’s how long Bob Dylan played for at…
Mario Reading reviews four first-rate first novels
It has become something of a truism among writers’ groups and in articles offering advice on how best to secure…
R.W. Johnson: 40-odd years prophesying the end for South Africa
I think this should begin with a truth-in-journalism disclosure: I know R.W. Johnson well enough to call him Bill. Since…
The trials of living with a High Court judge
This intensely written memoir by Adam Mars-Jones about his Welsh father, Sir William, opens with the death of Sheila, Adam’s…
A Gothic horror story of quicksands, riptides and rituals
This is a muddle of novel (originally published last year by Tartarus Press in a limited edition), though there are…
Gnats
after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) Their world is a glass of rainwater. They move up and down through the clearness,…
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Gnats
after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) Their world is a glass of rainwater. They move up and down through the clearness,…
Gnats
after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) Their world is a glass of rainwater. They move up and down through the clearness,…
Physicists have stranger ideas than the most preposterous Old Testament preacher
The beliefs of physicists are infinitely kookier than anything in the Bible, says Alexander Masters
Chairman Mao: monster of misrule
Mao Zedong, once the Helmsman, Great Teacher and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts, and still the Chairman, died in…
Matilda Bathurst chooses the best recent short story collections
‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…
From ragtime to the X Factor: the epic story of popular music
As pop music drifts away from many people’s lives, so its literature grows ever more serious and weighty, as though…
‘Doorways to the unknown’: Clive James’s Latest Readings
In the preface to his great collection of essays The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden claimed: ‘I prefer a critic’s notebooks…
The revolution that went up in smoke
‘Every day’, writes the foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson in this account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, ‘see-sawed between joy and…
