Books
The four men who averted the Apocalypse
Robert Service’s account of the greatest turning point in modern history is unlikely to be bettered, says Sherard Cowper-Coles
Erica Jong’s middle-aged dread
Who’d get old? Bits fall off, your loved ones start dropping like flies and, perhaps worst of all, the only…
Everything you always wanted to know about Sixties pop —and more
It might seem an odd choice, but after reading Jon Savage’s new book, I think if I had a time…
From cave painting to Maggi Hambling: the best Christmas art books
It’s been a memorably productive year for art books (I have published a couple myself), but certain volumes stand out.…
K2’s fatal attraction
Take one drug-addled occultist, one forlorn aristocrat, an assortment of urgent colonials and you have, no, not the western canon…
The best children’s authors of 2015 — after David Walliams
The easy way round buying books for children at Christmas is just to get them the latest David Walliams and…
The best short story collections — from childish gabbling to jaded nihilism
Anyone who enjoyed Ali Smith’s novel How to be Both, with its charmingly loopy monologue of an Italian Renaissance painter…
Treasure
Walking down the sands to investigate what they might find, shells or stones, flotsam pieces abandoned by tides, two figures…
Jack the Ripper unmasked again
The Whitechapel Fiend is a psychic conduit for the vilest aspects of Victorian sex and class, and a creature mainly…
Saints and demons
‘The Australian Labor Party is composed of two main factions,’ writes novelist Shane Maloney, ‘Them and Us’. This truth illuminates…
Treasure
Walking down the sands to investigate what they might find, shells or stones, flotsam pieces abandoned by tides, two figures…
Treasure
Walking down the sands to investigate what they might find, shells or stones, flotsam pieces abandoned by tides, two figures…
A further selection of books of the year — the best and most overrated of 2015
A further selection of the best and most overrated books of 2015, chosen by our regular reviewers
The deeper secrets of Britain’s submarines
The Silent Deep is a compelling and fascinating exposé of a service that for too long has had to remain…
Samuel Palmer: from long-haired mystic to High Church Tory
In his youth, Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) painted like a Romantic poet. The moonlit field of ‘The Harvest Moon’ (1831–32) glows…
Shock and awe in Coventry, 14 November 1940
On 14 November 1940, at seven in the evening, the Luftwaffe began to bomb Coventry. The skyline turned red like…
Bravery
I am not ready for the temple but neither am I ready for the market. Leave me, I pray, a…
Top tips for gardeners — from stroking seedlings to stacking logs
I spent the summer of 1976 working as a trainee gardener at the Arboretum Kalmthout in Belgium. My employer was…
Rab Butler was too indecisive (and badly dressed) to be Prime Minister
‘The best prime minister we never had’ is not an epithet exclusive to Rab Butler. Widely applied to the late…
August in Arizona
Helen Simpson is not a prolific writer; six slim collections of short stories in 25 years, each timed quinquennially with…
A stunning blend of simplicity and complexity
Reading Tintin when I was a child, in Britain in the 1970s, I always assumed Georges Remi’s creation was just…
Curiosities for Christmas
There is not, sadly, a dedicated Trivia Books section in your local Waterstones, although at this time of year there…
The atheist delusion
Dan Rhodes apparently had trouble finding a publisher for this short novel, and it’s possible to envisage a certain amount…
In the grip of yellow fever
In late Victorian south London a ‘lower-middle-class’ boy, Arthur Ward, is lingering over his copy of The Arabian Nights. The…
Bravery
I am not ready for the temple but neither am I ready for the market. Leave me, I pray, a…
