Books
Looking for treasure island
It is not easy to avoid clichés when writing about J.M.G. Le Clézio. Born in Nice in 1940, the recipient…
The wicked old Paris of the Orient
Here’s the Mandarin for ooh-la-la! As Taras Grescoe, a respected Canadian writer of nonfiction, shows in this marvellous, microscopically descriptive…
Principles of heredity
A clear, accurate, up-to-date pop science book on genetics would have been most welcome, says Stuart Ritchie. Sadly, this isn’t it
The elegiac and the exuberant
Discussions about the short story too often fall into a false dichotomy that can be characterised, in essence, by a…
Great halls, last balls
Contrary to popular myth, the exuberant flame of life in the English country house was not extinguished by tears at…
Why Juan Villoro is the best football writer you’ve never heard of
Football, unlike cricket, has for the most part been ill served by its writers. For every Brian Glanville and Ian…
There’s no escape
Patricia Highsmith was an accretion of oddities — a woman who doted on her pet snails and carried a selection…
The great monkey puzzle
King Kong, the story of a violently amorous gorilla, Me Cheeta, the autobiography of a slanderous Hollywood chimpanzee, and now…
Lost in a time capsule
On her arrival in Russia in 1914, Gerty Freely finds it refreshingly liberal compared to her native Britain: here servants…
One club, no hearts
Not a single line of this highly distinctive memoir happens out of doors. All of it takes place in rooms:…
Shakespeare’s crowning glory
In the 18th century, as Shakespeare began to take on classic status, editors began to notice differences between the texts…
On Moses’s mountain
A medieval party of 800 Armenians at the top of Mount Sinai suddenly found themselves surrounded by fire. Their pilgrim…
An Oxford treasure trove
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ wrote A.A. Milne in 1939, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Last laughs
A card in a shop window — ‘non-unionised, auxiliary nurses sought… 35p per hour. Ideal for outgoing compassionate females’ —…
Burning passions
This is a book which, as one eyes its lavish illustrations and dips into its elegant prose, looks as if…
Books & arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Laws that changed the world
Prosecution for genocide or crimes against humanity is now a given in international law. But before the Nuremberg Trials, these two groundbreaking notions didn’t exist. Daniel Hahn describes their origins and inspiration
Recent children’s books
Martin Stewart’s Riverkeep (Penguin, £7.99) has a list of books and writers on the cover: Moby-Dick, The Wizard of Oz,…
Wishful thinking
Deirdre McCloskey has been at work for many years on a huge project: to explain why the world has become…
Dante’s egomania
Unlike Shakespeare, who kept himself out of all his works, except the Sonnets, Dante was endlessly reworking his autobiography, even…
Strategies for seduction
The rough English translation of Kamasutra is pleasure (kama) treatise (sutra). In the West, since it was first (rather surreptitiously)…
The cryonics game
Cults, the desert, natural disasters. Artists, bankers, terrorists. Cash machines, food packaging, secret installations. Mediaspeak and scientific jargon. Crowds and…
Wars on drugs
‘Of all civilisation’s occupational categories, that of soldier may be the most conducive to regular drug use.’ The problem with…
Elizabeth alone
If you’ve been watching Game of Thrones recently, you’ll have seen an old folkloric fantasy in which a bewitching young…
Pride, prejudice, celebrity…
Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Eligible is a page-turning romantic comedy which is very funny and entirely ridiculous: each of the short…
