Books
Scratching a living
John Gross’s The Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters: English Literary Life since 1800, a standard text for…
Family divisions
The geological title of this unhappy memoir is an apt metaphor for fissures in the relationships between individuals of David…
Lost, found and lost again
This is an extraordinary story. In 1845 John Snare, an unremarkable Reading bookseller, goes to an auction in a defunct…
Telling tales
Medea says ‘hiiiiiiii’ on the first page of Mallory Ortberg’s hilarious book, which puts smartphones in the hands of literary…
A step too far
Captain Robert Nairac was a Grenadier Guards officer serving in Northern Ireland when on 14 May 1977 he was abducted…
Agony and ecstasy in the garden
I usually throw away dust jackets but Robin Lane Fox chose his for a reason. He originally encountered Augustine of…
The rarest blend of white and gold
This unusual book is beautifully written, produced and illustrated, but its subject — the small Slender-billed curlew — is strangely…
Misprint
Stealth is its policy. It lies in wait. It is no respecter of age. It turns up late Or far…
Misprint
Stealth is its policy. It lies in wait. It is no respecter of age. It turns up late Or far…
Misprint
Stealth is its policy. It lies in wait. It is no respecter of age. It turns up late Or far…
Casual, funny, flirtatious, severe
Not only is this the definitive edition of T.S. Eliot’s poems, it is also the best biography of the poet we have, says Daniel Swift
Bored and lonely in Kathmandu
It started as a ‘shoke’ — the Anglo-Indian slang word for ‘hobby’. Bored and lonely in Kathmandu, the young Assistant…
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
During the first ten pages of this long work Paul Theroux, on a journey through the American South, meets two…
Assorted Christmas crackers
There’s a moment in a child’s life where Christmas begins to lose its magic. Once lost it cannot be regained,…
Looking for Nessie
It wasn’t until I drove past Loch Ness a couple of years ago that I realised just how enormous it…
Vanity fair and foul
People tend to use the term ‘fashion victim’ somewhat damningly — and maybe jealously — to describe someone obsessed by…
A life well lived
‘I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not…
All Change
Based on a handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, my grandmother, a shepherd’s wife, who had worked as…
Spellbinding stuff
With the briefest of introductions to each chapter, it is up to the reader to decide how they want to…
Homage to awesome Welles on his centenary
One day in May 1948 in the Frascati hills southeast of Rome, Orson Welles took his new secretary, Rita Ribolla,…
Chrissie Hynde writes like an angel on angel dust
‘The day I found out that Suzi Quatro wasn’t a dyke was the worst day of my life!’ a teenage…
A Horrible History of English Hymns
Given that for much of English history the country’s main musical tradition was that connected with the church, it is…
Following yonder star
It’s hard to imagine Christmas without stars. They perch at the top of fir trees, glitter from greeting cards and…
O Rose thou art sick
Choosing to smell of something other than ourselves, and then perhaps in time coming to view that fragrance as ‘our’…
Here’s to Bill
Often, Christmas is a time for moaning after the night before, when the seasonal drinking is remembered (if remembered at…
