Books
Spirits of the Blitz
If the early Martin Amis is instantly recognisable by way of its idiosyncratic slang (‘rug-rethink’, ‘going tonto’ etc) then the…
Red for danger
‘Gentlemen prefer blondes,’ Anita Loos pronounced, ‘but gentlemen marry brunettes.’ Quite what they do with redheads she never revealed (and…
A rollicking satire on the way we live now
Jonathan Franzen’s latest novel, Purity, comes with great expectations. Its author’s awareness of this fact is signalled by a series…
Another near run thing
Charles VI of France died on 21 October 1422. He had been intermittently mad for most of his long reign,…
It happened one summer
Five songs, only three of which were amplified. Thirty-five minutes, including interruptions. That’s how long Bob Dylan played for at…
First-rate firsts
It has become something of a truism among writers’ groups and in articles offering advice on how best to secure…
The day of reckoning is nigh
I think this should begin with a truth-in-journalism disclosure: I know R.W. Johnson well enough to call him Bill. Since…
Life with old father William
This intensely written memoir by Adam Mars-Jones about his Welsh father, Sir William, opens with the death of Sheila, Adam’s…
Gothic mysteries
This is a muddle of novel (originally published last year by Tartarus Press in a limited edition), though there are…
Gnats
after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) Their world is a glass of rainwater. They move up and down through the clearness,…
Books and arts opener
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Gnats
after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) Their world is a glass of rainwater. They move up and down through the clearness,…
Gnats
after Robert Hooke, Micrographia (1665) Their world is a glass of rainwater. They move up and down through the clearness,…
In the sky with diamonds
The beliefs of physicists are infinitely kookier than anything in the Bible, says Alexander Masters
Monster of misrule
Mao Zedong, once the Helmsman, Great Teacher and Red Red Sun in Our Hearts, and still the Chairman, died in…
Short and surreal
‘I just wanted the damn story to ask the right questions,’ sighs a disaffected journalist in Jack Livings’s debut collection…
Music for the masses
As pop music drifts away from many people’s lives, so its literature grows ever more serious and weighty, as though…
These I have loved
In the preface to his great collection of essays The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden claimed: ‘I prefer a critic’s notebooks…
The writing on the wall
‘Every day’, writes the foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson in this account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, ‘see-sawed between joy and…
Hurricane Lolita
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov’s nostalgic memoir, reflects on his life from the age of three to 41, taking us from…
Elysium
The best time is the summer time When cow parsley is high, And daylight hours of field flowers Are spread…
Common sense, moral vision — and the magic touch
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Education is Tony Little’s valedictory meditation on his profession, published on his retirement as headmaster…
![Portrait of Pepys, after John Hayls. The Diary for 17 March 1666 reads: ‘This day I begin to sit [for Hayls], and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture.... I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.’](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pepys1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Lust for life
We all know about Samuel Pepys witnessing the Great Fire in his Diaries, but how many have read the definitive…
Elysium
The best time is the summer time When cow parsley is high, And daylight hours of field flowers Are spread…
Elysium
The best time is the summer time When cow parsley is high, And daylight hours of field flowers Are spread…
