Books

The psychiatrist obsessed with ‘reprogramming’ minds

12 April 2025 9:00 am

William Sargant’s controversial treatments of troubled young women in the 1960s included prolonged induced comas, ECT and, in extreme cases, lobotomies

Urban gothic: I Want to Go Home, But I’m Already There, by Roisin Lanigan, reviewed

12 April 2025 9:00 am

A rented London flat starts to exude hostility and malevolence – or could our impressionable heroine just be imagining it?

Petty, malicious and tremendous fun – the Facebook office drama

12 April 2025 9:00 am

Sarah Wynn-Williams’s gleeful dissections of former colleagues’ foibles were met with furious denials and the threat of legal action – guaranteeing maximum publicity for her book

William Blake still weaves his mystic spell

12 April 2025 9:00 am

Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’

The sin of TDS

5 April 2025 9:00 am

You almost have to admire the nerve, the gall, the sheer chutzpah. Here we have a book about the mental…

The Pinochet affair: the pursuit of a Chilean dictator

5 April 2025 9:00 am

A fast and compelling account of what happened when the retired general came to London in the late 1990s for an operation, by a lawyer closely involved in the case

The Da Vinci world of known unknowns

5 April 2025 9:00 am

Was Leonardo really vegetarian, agnostic and a fashion icon? In this searingly brilliant new ‘anti-biography’ we learn there isn’t much we can say about him with any certainty at all

Doctor, Doctor: the genesis of a national folk hero

5 April 2025 9:00 am

A foray into the BBC television series Doctor Who in which the author reaches heavily into the biographies of its lead actors with illuminating results

Satire and settled scores: Universality by Natasha Brown reviewed

5 April 2025 9:00 am

Skewering journalistic pretension to authority is the main business of a novel that contrives to be both viciously accurate and weirdly off the mark

Tony Benn, bogeyman to some, beacon of hope and light to many

5 April 2025 9:00 am

A collection of speeches and articles reminds us that ‘the most dangerous man in Britain’ was thoughtful, kind, entertaining and one of the most appealing politicians of the postwar period – writes a Conservative MP

Murder she imagined: The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami reviewed

5 April 2025 9:00 am

The Moroccan-born American writer’s fifth novel is set in a US where algorithmic policing has halved gun deaths and despite the loss of liberty the majority are happy with the bargain

The last of the great salonnières

5 April 2025 9:00 am

At her house in Westminster, Lady Pamela Berry, deb and it girl and then wife of Daily Telegraph proprietor Lord Hartwell, gathered parliamentarians, writers, aristocrats and wits

Poor little rich girl: the extraordinary life of Yoko Ono

5 April 2025 9:00 am

Her background was one of privilege and she married one of the most famous men of our time but the Japanese artist suffered her fair share of grief and misfortune

Heroes of the Norwegian resistance

29 March 2025 9:00 am

Among many fascinating characters is Gunnar Waaler, a double agent who passed on intelligence to the British while posing as an enthusiastic member of Quisling’s police force

Deep mysteries: Twist, by Colum McCann, reviewed

29 March 2025 9:00 am

An enigmatic captain tasked with repairing undersea communication cables disappears, and it’s up to his shipmate to discover why

Why, at 75, does Graydon Carter still feel the need to impress?

29 March 2025 9:00 am

The humblebrag and name-dropping read more like a Craig Brown pastiche than the reminiscences of one of America’s most celebrated magazine editors

A meditation on the beauty of carbon

29 March 2025 9:00 am

In fact carbon proves just a peg for a series of essays on the oneness of life, with references to ‘ancient teachings’ , ‘other ways of knowing’ and Hindu and Buddhist cosmologies

A novel in disguise: Theory & Practice, by Michelle de Kretser, reviewed

29 March 2025 9:00 am

De Kretser’s witty, innovative take on the immigrant’s predicament tries ingeniously to persuade us that we are not reading fiction but documentary truth

Bringing modernism to the masses in 20th-century Britain

29 March 2025 9:00 am

Owen Hatherley examines the contribution of refugees from central Europe to the film industry, publishing and public art, especially architecture and town planning

Escape into fantasy: Stories of Ireland, by Brian Friel, reviewed

29 March 2025 9:00 am

Friel’s tightly knit rural communities like to cling to illusions, whether it’s belief in sunken gold in the bay or in the continual prosperity of impoverished gentry

The story of Noah’s flood will never go out of fashion

29 March 2025 9:00 am

Most cultures have a universal flood myth, and the idea of a cataclysmic climate event brought on by human wickedness is always bound to resonate

Across the universe – John and Paul are in each other’s songs forever

29 March 2025 9:00 am

The Lennon-McCartney collaboration was one of genius from the start – and even in later years their songs continued to speak to one another, says Ian Leslie

How Anne Frank’s photograph became as recognisable as the Mona Lisa

29 March 2025 9:00 am

To date, the diary, pieced together from Anne’s notebooks, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, with her story further explored in plays, films and novels

Fight or flight?: 33 Place Brugmann, by Alice Austen, reviewed

22 March 2025 9:00 am

Residents of a sedate apartment block in Brussels react in very different ways to the Nazi invasion of Belgium in 1940

Why are we routinely buying disgusting bread in Britain?

22 March 2025 9:00 am

Tasteless, adulterated, mass-produced pap bears no resemblance to an independent baker’s slow-fermented loaves, full of flavour, texture and nutrients