Books
Sugar and spies
John Gimlette on the strange and superbly told story of Willoughbyland, England’s ‘lost’ colony
A walk on the mild side
Novels set in the music business (from blockbuster to coming-of-age) are few and far between — far less than in…
Bloated Biased Correct
The BBC was created out of the ether in 1922. Its first director general, Lord Reith, inhabited a cupboard some…
Was Keats right after all?
Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…
Our man in Africa
This novel comes with two mysteries attached, one substantial, the other superficial. The big mystery is the author’s identity. Gender-neutral,…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
The cavalier Michael
Michael Moorcock has put his name to more books, pamphlets and fanzines than, probably, even Michael Moorcock can count, but…
Saying nothing, very well
In June 2009, the good people of South Carolina lost Mark Sanford, their governor. Per his instructions, his staff told…
Poetic injustice
‘Why do another translation of Homer?’ Richmond Lattimore asked in the foreword to his own great translation of the Iliad…
Salad days
If you enjoy reading Greg Sheridan’s Diaries in this magazine, you’ll love this book. The author, a 30-year veteran journalist…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Caves of ice
Modern civilisation depends on refrigeration — but we have been trying to manufacture cold for at least 4,000 years, says Michael Bywater
The soul takes flight
Last month, at Edinburgh School of Art, I was interested to come across a student who’d chosen Marlowe’s Dr Faustus…
Is no one having fun?
Who’d be young? Not 25-year-old Tamsin, if her behaviour is anything to go by. A classical pianist who’s never quite…
LA runs riot
Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…
The crackdown that backfired
In October 2013, a jeep ploughed through a crowd of pedestrians on the edge of Tiananmen Square, crashed and burst…
Fancy dress parade
For his 75th birthday, Sir Roy Strong gave himself a personal trainer. For his 80th, he has commissioned a book…
Children’s summer reading
It’s the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland — cue an explosion of editions of the book, a new biography…
Lost horizon
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
Angry, funny, timely
It’s not Paul Murray’s settings or themes — decadent aristocrats, clerical sex abuse, the financial crisis — that mark him…
For your own good
I grew up queer in Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland. Bjelke-Petersen was populist, racist, and religious: he hated socialism, but the Queensland of…
Divide and quit
Had it not been for the empire, Britain might have lost the second world war, says William Dalrymple. The war certainly lost Britain the empire
Sometimes it’s good to worry
At last, a snappy pop philosophy book which offers to sort out absolutely none of your personal issues. If anything,…
Reducing poetry to a science
Is it possible to tell a good poem from a bad one? To put the question another way: are there…
