Books
Awfully arrayed
John Keegan, perhaps the greatest British military historian of recent years, felt that the most important book (because of its…
One vast, blaring cultural circus
In the late 1980s Peter Ackroyd invited me to meet Iain Sinclair, whose first novel, White Chappell, Scarlet Tracings, I…
Curious shades of Browne
On the evening of 10 March 1804, Samuel Taylor Coleridge settled at a desk in an effort to articulate what…
The first Clive Palmer
When former Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard, was finishing off his autobiography Lazarus Rising in 2010 I asked him whether…
Parmenion
Athens The air-raid siren howls Over the quiet, the un-rioting city. It’s just a drill. But the unearthly vowels Ululate…
Parmenion
Athens The air-raid siren howls Over the quiet, the un-rioting city. It’s just a drill. But the unearthly vowels Ululate…
From ambrosia to zabaglione
This Oxford Companion ranges from the sweet to the decidedly salty, while being the most politically correct reference book you will ever consult, says Paul Levy
Robin Hood v. the toffs
The publicity blurb about the two unpleasant criminals whom this dismal book romanticises says that they are ‘continuing their ancestors’…
Sub-Aga saga
Lovely, gentle Isabel, just 40, makes masks. Her husband Dan, erstwhile ‘student of the Classics’ and playwright manqué, is ‘bored…
Some animals are more equal than others
Here are two parallel books, both by Americans, both 260 pages (excluding indexes) long, both using ‘likely’ as an adverb.…
The forgotten faithful
It is often said that cricket was ‘a game invented by the English and played by Indians’, and every so…
Only the lonely
This book starts with a Chinese boy so privileged and pampered that, at 21, he can’t open his own suitcase,…
Confessions of a Fedhead
Good writing about sport is rare — and good writing about tennis is that much rarer — so it’s conspicuous…
A watershed moment in music history
In 1994 I was working in marketing at London Records, a frothy pop label part-owned by the Polygram Group —…
The traffic in human misery
When Sara discovers that her husband died in India, rather than being killed in Afghanistan as she was told, she…
Bogs and fogs
In his poem ‘Eden Rock’, Charles Causley conjures up a dreamy memory of a childhood picnic ‘somewhere beyond Eden Rock’.…
Message
A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…
Message
A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…
Message
A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…
When we were very young
A wonderfully vivid school story has surfaced written by Queen Victoria as a child. The monarch was clearly a sensational novelist manqué, says Philip Hensher
Lost in the telling
This is a thriller, a novel of betrayal and separation, and a reverie on death and grieving. The only key…
A triumphant failure
I must be an idiot for pointing out the failings of a novel that’s so screamingly, self-denouncingly about failure. Steve…
Something sensational to read on the train
Readers who have put in some time on the railways may remember the neat, brush-painted graffiti that appeared in 1974…
Dizzying swirls of impasto
With a career of more than 60 years so far, Frank Auerbach is undoubtedly one of the big beasts of…
Nasty piece of work
Finders Keepers is a sort-of sequel to last year’s Mr Mercedes, Stephen King’s first foray into what he called ‘hard-boiled…
