Books
Are we finally beginning to understand gravity?
Claudia de Rham explores the true nature of this fundamental force as she struggles against received wisdom to get a new theory of ‘massive gravity’ recognised
Eighty years on, the planning of Operation Neptune remains awesome
The seaborne invasion went so smoothly, it might have been thought plain-sailing. But that was far from the truth. Nick Hewitt describes the meticulous forethought that preceded it
Harping on the music of our ancestors
From a series of mysterious objects – ‘flower flutes’, inscriptions, ‘little black things like beetles’ wing cases’ – Graeme Lawson conjures the haunting melodies of the past
Scrawled outpourings of love and defiance
Examples of 18th-century graffiti range from romantic rhymes scratched on windowpanes to the haunting marks of political prisoners incised on dungeon walls
London’s dark underbelly: Caledonian Road, by Andrew O’Hagan, reviewed
With its vast cast and twisting plot, O’Hagan’s complex novel feels as busy and noisy as the north London thoroughfare of its title
What we owe to the self-taught genius Carl Linnaeus
Bumptious, uncouth and the despair of his schoolmasters, Linnaeus died almost forgotten. Yet he established a system of taxonomy that we still use two centuries later
In the grip of apocalypse angst
Dorian Lynskey lays out the many ways in which we have imagined the world ending – through pandemic, nuclear holocaust, climate change, asteroid impact or, most unnervingly, AI
Sir Roger Casement never deserved to hang
Executed as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, he was absent from Dublin at the time of the doomed insurrection – and actually tried to prevent it
The desperate desire to belong: England is Mine, by Nicolas Padamsee, reviewed
A teenage victim of bullying is gradually drawn into a world of online extremism in this entirely relatable story of the adolescent yearning for acceptance
Turf wars in Las Vegas: City in Ruins, by Don Winslow, reviewed
The concluding volume of the Danny Ryan trilogy sees the gangster hero involved in a bitter feud over the purchase of a crumbling property on the Las Vegas Strip
‘Now I have been made whole’: Lucy Sante’s experience of transition
Until the age of 66, Sante lived as a deeply divided man. In this story of self-realisation, she describes how transitioning finally ‘lifted the veil’ over her existence
The secret of success in Formula 1
For decades, competitive advantage depended on finding loopholes in the sport’s rule book – and no one knew that better than the British entrepreneur Bernie Ecclestone
The rat as hero
After adopting two baby rats as pets, Joe Shute slowly overcomes his aversion and learns to appreciate the intelligence of creatures that are really quite like us
My prep school scarred me for life
‘A part of me died at school’, Charles Spencer writes in his shockingly stark account of sadism and sexual abuse at Maidwell Hall, Northamptonshire, in the 1970s
Stories of the Sussex Downs
Focusing on a 20-mile square of West Sussex, Alexandra Harris explores its rich history, from the wreck of a Viking longboat to a refuge for French Resistance agents
The horrors of the Eastern Front
Nick Lloyd reinforces Churchill’s sentiment that the first world war in the East was ‘one of the most frightful misfortunes to befall mankind’
Why today’s youth is so anxious and judgmental
In a well-evidenced diatribe, Jonathan Haidt accuses the creators of smartphone culture of rewiring childhood and changing human development on an unimaginable scale
On the road with Danny Lyon
The celebrated photojournalist describes his peripatetic youth recording revolution in Haiti, hunger and homelessness in Mexico and the civil rights movement in the US
Caught in a Venus flytrap: Red Pyramid, by Vladimir Sorokin, reviewed
Sorokin’s satirical stories are not for the fainthearted, but there are few more dedicated critics of Russia's infinite bureaucracy writing fiction today
Resolute, dignified and intelligent: Elizabeth II inspired loyalty from the start
Alexander Larman describes how, from 1945 onwards, the House of Windsor set about rebranding itself after a decade of crisis both internal and external
The world’s largest flower is also its ugliest
Known as ‘corpse flower’, the sinister Rafflesia resembles slabs of bloody, white-flecked meat, emits the scent of rotting flesh and eventually subsides into a mass of black slime
How country living changed the lives of three remarkable women writers
Harriet Baker describes how Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann found new forms of peace and creativity away from the stifling capital
‘Enough to kill any man’: the trials of serving Queen Victoria
Of all the Queen’s prime ministers, Gladstone suffered the most from her wilfulness, but while he opposed her policies he did much to popularise her monarchy
The curious influence of Oscar Wilde on Hollywood
After Wilde’s visit to the US in 1882, his philosophy of life became an inspiration to early filmmakers in their revolt against corporate America, Wall Street and provincial pettiness
A voyage of literary discovery: Clara Reads Proust, by Stéphane Carlier, reviewed
A 23-year-old hairdresser casually picks up a copy of Swann’s Way left behind by a client – only to find the novel taking over her life
