Books
Whatever next?
‘Ah, Jeremy,’ remarked Tony Blair at a smart dinner party in Islington not long before he became prime minister, ‘he…
Beautiful losers
When Henry Worsley died last month attempting the first solo, unaided expedition across the Antarctic, he was 30 miles short…
One fine spring day
The opening of Graham Swift’s new novel clearly signals his intent. ‘Once upon a time’ tells us that this will…
Putting Germany together again
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
A love letter to Italy
Imagine you’re an unknown young writer whose first collection of stories wins the Pulitzer prize. Your first novel is filmed,…
Escaping the Inferno
I read this, Meg Rosoff’s first novel for adults (though her previous fiction, aimed at teenagers, is widely enjoyed by…
Burrowed wisdom
Being a Beast is an impassioned and proselytising work of philosophy based on a spectacular approach to nature writing. That…
A box of delights
Juliet Nicolson examines women’s lives and changing fashions through a rich hoard of buttons for all occasions
Raptor rapture
The fewer birds there are, the more books about them, particularly of the literary kind. Helen MacDonald’s H is for…
Voices of St Joan
I don’t know if this counts as name-dropping, but I recently interviewed a boyhood friend of Elvis Presley’s in Tupelo,…
A plague on all P-words
This isn’t a book to read before lights out. It’s about a mentally ill man whose mother exiles him from…
A people horrible to behold
The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard,…
Stop calling me ‘Goat’
The title of Tim Parks’s 17th novel is false advertising, because Thomas and Mary: A Love Story is barely a…
Rescuing old Nick
In the conclusion to his very substantial study of England’s least known and most misunderstood Baroque architect, Owen Hopkins discusses…
Frozen beards and hot tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
The trouble with mothers
For a child, the idea of ‘knowing’ your mother doesn’t compute; she’s merely there. As an adult, there may be…
Sixty years on
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…
The big steal
In recent weeks, North Korea allegedly developed a hydrogen bomb and hangover-free booze. This would be a worrying combination in…
The inglorious Twelfth
Most people know more about the 12th century than they think they do. This is, as Richard Huscroft reminds us…
Tawdry tales of Tinseltown
This collection of Hollywood tittle-tattle is moderately interesting, unpleasantly salacious and largely unsourced, says Philip Hensher
‘Crazy mixed-up Yid’
Even David Litvinoff’s surname was a concoction. It was really Levy. Wanting something ‘more romantic’, he appropriated that of his…
Losing a Crown in the National Portrait Gallery
The cafe was full of connoisseurs of the scones. As he bit into his flapjack a sinister uncoupling took place…
Roaming in the gloaming
One of the epigraphs to Peter Davidson’s nocturne on Europe’s arts of twilight is from Hegel: ‘The owl of Minerva…
Odi et amo
Reading Daisy Dunn’s ambitious first book, a biography of the salty (in more ways than one) Roman poet Catullus, it…
Down and out in Park Lane and Plaistow
‘I was born in London,’ Ben Judah tells us early in this vivid portrait of Britain’s capital, ‘but I no…
