Books
Worlds apart
Classics is a boastful subject. Even the name — classics — has an inner boast; as does the classics course…
Daddy dearest
In 2004, after a 25-year estrangement, Susan Faludi’s father reappeared in her life via email. ‘I have had enough of…
The art of getting by
Naples, ragamuffin capital of the Italian south, is reckoned to be a hive of pickpocketing and black-market manoeuvrings. (A Neapolitan…
Making waves
The tour guides of Ephesus, in Turkey, have a nice party trick to wake up their dozing coach passengers. As…
The wonder of knowledge
‘Transparency,’ remarks Eliade Jenks, narrator of Joanna Kavenna’s fourth novel, A Field Guide to Reality, ‘is an aspiration. But wouldn’t…
Mournful and meticulous
After a curtain-twitching cul-de-sac, a Preston shopping precinct, and the Church of the Latter-Day Saints brought to Lancashire, Jenn Ashworth…
Food for thought
Elisabeth Luard has a fascinating and rich subject in the relationship between food and place. Humans eat differently according to…
Defeat by tweet and blog
The Wake, Paul Kingsnorth’s Booker-longlisted debut novel, was set just after the Norman Conquest, and was told in an odd…
Piety and savagery
First a confession. Like many modern British readers, I have contracted a severe case of Jihad Overload Syndrome. Symptoms of…
A trick of the light
There is a moment at the start of most authors’ careers when it is hard to get anything published, and…
Godly swingers
There were two communist manifestos of 1848. One had no influence whatsoever on the revolutions of that year, but now…
Music, love and all things human
When James Kelman won the Man Booker prize for How Late it Was, How Late, one judge stormed out, calling…
MPs and DTs
In 1964, a newly elected Labour MP was put in charge of the House of Commons kitchen committee. (An unpromising…
Back from the front
In his preface Sebastian Junger tells us that this book grew out of an earlier article. It obviously didn’t grow…
We’re all curators now
In January 1980 Isaac Asimov, writer of ‘hard science fiction’, professor of bio-chemistry and vice-president of Mensa International, penned a…
Good clean fun
The Detection Club is rather like the House of Lords of British crime writing, though considerably more select. (I should…
The laureate of repression
In 1927, while delivering the lectures that would later be published as Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster made a…
Two little boys, one little toy
Rose Tremain sets the true story of Police Captain Paul Grüninger, commander of the Swiss border force in Canton Saint…
What did you do in the last war, Maman?
‘La France,’ as everyone knows, is female. Perhaps this is due to gendered assumptions about the beauty, cuisine and couture…
Preacher and prosecutor
Craig Raine is a pugnacious figure in the fractious world of contemporary poetry. When his poem ‘Gatwick’ appeared in the…
Of microbes and men
Which disease are you most scared of catching: Ebola or influenza? Before I read this medical memoir, I would have…
Escape into pop
‘How can you come into this room and ask me “What is the purpose of life?”,’ wails Massive Attack’s laconic…
Life’s rich collage
Such is the veneration in this country for the St Ives school of painters, it’s easy to forget that other…
Ce n’est pas la guerre
On 1 July 1916, along a frontage of 18 miles, 100,000 British infantrymen — considerably more than the entire strength…
The food of love
‘You are the most adorable man and artist, intelligent, gifted, simple, loving and noble… I am really very, very lucky…
