Books
The road to Lolita: why Nabokov’s literary talent finally blossomed in America
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov’s nostalgic memoir, reflects on his life from the age of three to 41, taking us from…
Elysium
The best time is the summer time When cow parsley is high, And daylight hours of field flowers Are spread…
How to get a good education — from the former headmaster of Eton
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education is Tony Little’s valedictory meditation on his profession, published on his retirement as headmaster…
![Portrait of Pepys, after John Hayls. The Diary for 17 March 1666 reads: ‘This day I begin to sit [for Hayls], and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture.... I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.’](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pepys1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
The joy of an unexpurgated Pepys — without the bother of reading it oneself
We all know about Samuel Pepys witnessing the Great Fire in his Diaries, but how many have read the definitive…
Elysium
The best time is the summer time When cow parsley is high, And daylight hours of field flowers Are spread…
Elysium
The best time is the summer time When cow parsley is high, And daylight hours of field flowers Are spread…
The old-fashioned greatness of Christian Thielemann
Philip Hensher admires an old-fashioned conductor who unashamedly favours the great German composers — and Wagner in particular
A remote island community is disrupted by the arrival of a troubled teenager
Benjamin Wood’s first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was published in 2012, picked up good reviews, was shortlisted for the Costa…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
Jonathan Galassi’s fictional poet made me doubt my knowledge of American literature
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
Rediscover the venerable father of English history
It might seem to some a bold move to base a book on any kind of journey at all when…
Machado de Assis wasn’t the Dickens of Brazil— but he is one of the greats
The surname is pronounced ‘M’shahdo j’Asseece’. There are also two Christian names — Joaquim Maria — which are usually dispensed…
John Freeman: polymath or psychopath?
They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of…
An epic study of trauma and friendship in the age of self-invention
Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
Pollie peddling
When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
The strange history of Willoughbyland, modern-day Suriname
John Gimlette on the strange and superbly told story of Willoughbyland, England’s ‘lost’ colony
The rock novel that makes Mötley Crüe dull
Novels set in the music business (from blockbuster to coming-of-age) are few and far between — far less than in…
The story of the BBC
The BBC was created out of the ether in 1922. Its first director general, Lord Reith, inhabited a cupboard some…
Is truth really beauty after all?
Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…
A murder mystery in Zimbabwe
This novel comes with two mysteries attached, one substantial, the other superficial. The big mystery is the author’s identity. Gender-neutral,…
