Books
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Michael Moorcock’s ‘autobiography’
Michael Moorcock has put his name to more books, pamphlets and fanzines than, probably, even Michael Moorcock can count, but…
The best American political memoir in a generation
In June 2009, the good people of South Carolina lost Mark Sanford, their governor. Per his instructions, his staff told…
A new translation of the Iliad
‘Why do another translation of Homer?’ Richmond Lattimore asked in the foreword to his own great translation of the Iliad…
Salad days
If you enjoy reading Greg Sheridan’s Diaries in this magazine, you’ll love this book. The author, a 30-year veteran journalist…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Cooling is as important to civilisation as making fire — only much harder
Modern civilisation depends on refrigeration — but we have been trying to manufacture cold for at least 4,000 years, says Michael Bywater
We all love butterflies — so why are we wiping them out?
Last month, at Edinburgh School of Art, I was interested to come across a student who’d chosen Marlowe’s Dr Faustus…
A novel to cure fear of missing out
Who’d be young? Not 25-year-old Tamsin, if her behaviour is anything to go by. A classical pianist who’s never quite…
The gangs of LA are caught in an unending bloody vendetta
Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…
China’s repressive policy towards its Islamic fringe has badly backfired
In October 2013, a jeep ploughed through a crowd of pedestrians on the edge of Tiananmen Square, crashed and burst…
Camp carnival: Roy Strong’s 80th birthday pageant
For his 75th birthday, Sir Roy Strong gave himself a personal trainer. For his 80th, he has commissioned a book…
Green djinns and a green boy: the best summer reading for children
It’s the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland — cue an explosion of editions of the book, a new biography…
The story of Sikkim’s last king and queen reads like a fairy tale gone wrong
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
A broad farce about banking’s dirty secrets in post-Celtic-Tiger Dublin
It’s not Paul Murray’s settings or themes — decadent aristocrats, clerical sex abuse, the financial crisis — that mark him…
For your own good
I grew up queer in Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland. Bjelke-Petersen was populist, racist, and religious: he hated socialism, but the Queensland of…
Britain didn’t fight the second world war — the British empire did
Had it not been for the empire, Britain might have lost the second world war, says William Dalrymple. The war certainly lost Britain the empire
The opposite of a self-help book
At last, a snappy pop philosophy book which offers to sort out absolutely none of your personal issues. If anything,…
Helen Vendler is full of condescending waffle (and not just when she’s attacking me)
Is it possible to tell a good poem from a bad one? To put the question another way: are there…
Bletchley Park was decades ahead of Silicon Valley. So what happened?
Gordon Corera, best known as the security correspondent for BBC News, somehow finds time to write authoritative, well-researched and readable…
Last day
None of the teachers who taught us were around that final afternoon at Grammar school — probably frightened of being…
Rory McEwen: man of many talents — and among the greatest of all flower painters
It seems odd that a singer, musician, television performer and sculptor who typified the 1960s as vividly as Rory McEwen…
Harry’s Homer — a humorous history
It was a certain unforgettable ex-girlfriend, Harry Mount confesses — named only as ‘S’ in his dedication — who came…
A crime novel so incompetent it might have been written by a child
First, a quote from the novel under review. The context: it is a flashback scene of the behaviour of a…
