Books
Love child or bastard: the lottery of being born on the wrong side of the blanket
My father was handed over a shop counter when he was a day old. His aunt had tried to pass…
Life in the LA ghetto was nasty, brutish and short — until one brave detective took on the gangs
Los Angeles ghetto life — thrashed, twisted and black — is not a world that most Americans care to visit.…
The art of political biography remains in intensive care if Giles Radice’s latest book is anything to go by, says Simon Heffer
With the odd exception — I think principally of Charles Moore’s life of Margaret Thatcher — the genre of political…
Why the cheating cuckoo may finally be getting its comeuppance
In recent years there has been a fashion for so-called ‘new nature writing’, where the works are invariably heavy with…
Symbolism and a man called U: more avant-garde fiction from Tom McCarthy
In a 2008 essay Zadie Smith held up Tom McCarthy’s austere debut Remainder as a bold exemplar of avant-garde fiction,…
Not Mister Jones!
My father was always arguing and falling out with people in the neighbourhood, but when he clashed with Mister Jones,…
British colonialism is once again under attack in Aatish Taseer’s sprawling Indian epic
Early in the second section of Aatish Taseer’s The Way Things Were we are presented with a striking description of…
Ray Davies: part of Swinging Sixties London — and apart from it too
As Johnny Rogan notes in this new biography of Ray Davies and the Kinks, it is almost 50 years since…
Men behaving badly: Nero, Claudius and even Seneca could be intensely cruel to women — and fish
They lived in barrels, they camped on top of columns, or in caves: the lives of the sages are often…
Monstrous, beautiful, damaged people make for tiresome company in Polly Samson’s The Kindness
Julian is clever, handsome and spoiled, a gilded youth who has all the girls wanting to mother him, and a…
Life after Vera: Patrick Gale’s hero finds happiness towards the end of the Saskatchewan line
Patrick Gale’s first historical novel is inspired by a non-story, a gap in his own family record. His great-grandfather Harry…
Stuck at K: we know very little about vitamins except that they’re good for us (in small quantities)
Before I read this book about vitamins, I thought I knew what it would be like. It would be vaguely…
All in the name of science: three young naturalists go on an Amazonian killing-spree
John Hemming is our greatest living scholar-explorer. He is best known for his extraordinary first book The Conquest of the…
The Irish Times: read by the smug denizens of Dublin 4 and responsible for the Celtic Tiger property bubble
The most successful newspapers have a distinct personality of their own with which their readers connect. In Britain, the Daily…
Don’t Look Back
No, let’s not look at the old photographs any more: our hair was so full and shiny then, and anyway…
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Not Mister Jones!
My father was always arguing and falling out with people in the neighbourhood, but when he clashed with Mister Jones,…
Don’t Look Back
No, let’s not look at the old photographs any more: our hair was so full and shiny then, and anyway…
Not Mister Jones!
My father was always arguing and falling out with people in the neighbourhood, but when he clashed with Mister Jones,…
Don’t Look Back
No, let’s not look at the old photographs any more: our hair was so full and shiny then, and anyway…
British India — the scene of repeated war crimes throughout the 19th century
William Dalrymple is uncomfortably reminded of the astonishing savagery by which the East India Company maintained the Raj throughout the 19th century
Sex, rebellion, ambition, prejudice: the story of 1950s women has it all
Although the young women of the 1950s hovered on the cusp of change, many did not know it. Valerie Gisborn…
Anders Brievik: lonely computer-gamer on a killing spree
In 2011, Anders Breivik murdered 69 teenagers in a socialist summer camp outside the Norwegian capital of Oslo, and eight…
Ancients on oldies: tips on ageing from the Romans are all Greek to Richard Ingrams
A few months ago I went to a lunch at Univ, my old college in Oxford, to celebrate the 95th…
This terrifying book puts me off going online ever again —except maybe to Ocado — says India Knight
India Knight 21 March 2015 9:00 am
Jeremy Clarkson has been getting it in the neck from Twitter’s (I was going to say) tricoteuses — but social…