Books
Into a cloud-scratched sky
There have been a number of attempts to graft the style of the so-called new nature writing onto the novel:…
The clean and the unclean
In 1991, Moby folded the theme from Twin Peaks into a remix of his dance track ‘Go’ and a diminutive,…
Park life
Petrichor. Coined as recently as 1964 but redolent of Eden onwards, the word appears in neither of these volumes but…
Hacks and robbers
Readers of advanced years like me will almost certainly remember the bow-tied figure of Edgar Lustgarten, star of any number…
Woolton’s war
In wartime the housekeeping is a nightmare. While fighting Napoleon in Spain the Duke of Wellington sent an infuriated letter…
Wise women in wikuoms
You can’t see the wood for the trees in Annie Proulx’s epic novel of logging and deforestation in North America, says Philip Hensher
Girl power
Many years ago, working on a project in Tel Aviv, I had a meeting-free weekend. I know, I thought, I’ll…
Northern lights
‘The only use of a gentleman in travelling,’ Emmeline Lowe wrote in 1857, ‘is to take care of the luggage.’…
Loved and lost
Kathleen Kennedy and her elder brother JFK were the grandchildren of upwardly mobile Irish Catholic immigrants. John F. Fitzgerald, ‘Honey…
A force for good
When I saw this book, a biography of Huw Wheldon, who was managing director of BBC Television between 1968 and…
Bohemian life Down Under
Here’s a pair of little books — one even littler than the other — by Robin Dalton (née Eakin), a…
Beyond the looking-glass
Children’s fantasy literature has never been just one thing. Animal fables, folk and fairy tales were not originally intended for…
Nostalgia and nihilism
‘Gilded doorknobs,’ spits a Party diehard as she contemplates the blessings of the Soviet Union’s collapse. ‘Is this freedom?’ Dozens…
The people’s prince
In Pepys’s famous words, James, Duke of Monmouth was ‘the most skittish, leaping gallant that ever I saw, always in…
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…
