Books
Wholly German art
Philip Hensher admires an old-fashioned conductor who unashamedly favours the great German composers — and Wagner in particular
The lives of the artists — and other mysteries
Benjamin Wood’s first novel, The Bellwether Revivals, was published in 2012, picked up good reviews, was shortlisted for the Costa…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
Idolising Ida
Jonathan Galassi is an American publisher, poet and translator. In his debut novel Muse, his passion for the ‘good old…
Venerable father of English history
It might seem to some a bold move to base a book on any kind of journey at all when…
Rio’s rococo genius
The surname is pronounced ‘M’shahdo j’Asseece’. There are also two Christian names — Joaquim Maria — which are usually dispensed…
Polymath or psychopath?
They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of…
The lonely struggle of Jude the obscure
Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
Pollie peddling
When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
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…
