Books
Following the fickle fish
Fish stories come in two varieties: the micro-version of a hundred riverside bars, blokeish boastings of rod-and-line tussles with individual…
Ticks and crosses
Houses, as any plumber will testify, do sometimes blow up in gas explosions, destroying their contents and inhabitants, but would…
A new track record
Simon Bradley dates the demise of the on-board meal service to 1962, when Pullman services no longer offered croutons with…
On the way to Plumpton
We pull up at Wivelsfield, under a blue sky, and glance out at the one figure on the platform: a…
A captivating prospect
What could happen in literature to a young couple — or a pair of young couples — who fall off…
The continent in crisis
Sir Ian Kershaw won his knight’s spurs as a historian with his much acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and…
Review
(reading Daphne Rooke) Thank you for the book. It reminded me in the way she writes, dry as the Karoo,…
A myth is as good as a mile
We live in disenchanted times. We barely do God, most of us don’t do magic and frenzied consumerism occupies our…
Marvellous, murderous city
When Stefan Zweig first arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1936, he was overwhelmed not only by the city’s magnificent…
When the boys come home
Matthew Green, former Financial Times and Reuters correspondent, remains unimpressed by officialdom’s response to casualties who aren’t actually bleeding: Ever…
For better, for worse
Before I read this book, I wasn’t aware that I was a creationist. But Matt Ridley tells me I am,…
Books and Arts opener
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Remembering P.J. Kavanagh
‘Elms at the end of twilight are very interesting,’ wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his journal: ‘Against the sky they…
Hoof-trimming
The below is an unpublished poem, written for Moortown, the verse-diary of Ted Hughes’s experiences of farming in Devon in…
On the way to Plumpton
We pull up at Wivelsfield, under a blue sky, and glance out at the one figure on the platform: a…
Review
(reading Daphne Rooke) Thank you for the book. It reminded me in the way she writes, dry as the Karoo,…
Remembering P.J. Kavanagh
‘Elms at the end of twilight are very interesting,’ wrote Gerard Manley Hopkins in his journal: ‘Against the sky they…
Hoof-trimming
The below is an unpublished poem, written for Moortown, the verse-diary of Ted Hughes’s experiences of farming in Devon in…
On the way to Plumpton
We pull up at Wivelsfield, under a blue sky, and glance out at the one figure on the platform: a…
Review
(reading Daphne Rooke) Thank you for the book. It reminded me in the way she writes, dry as the Karoo,…
Hero or collaborator?
Simon Baron-Cohen wonders whether the humane Hans Asperger may finally have betrayed the vulnerable children in his care in Nazi-occupied Vienna
Waiting for Utopia
The Soviet Union was a nation of bus stops. Cars were hard to come by, so a vast public transport…
The trip of a lifetime
Aldous Huxley reported his first psychedelic experience in The Doors of Perception (1954), a bewitching little volume that soon became…
Time out of mind
There can hardly be two novelists less alike than Sebastian Faulks and Will Self, in style and in content. Faulks…
A karaoke version of Kafka
The Blue Guitar is John Banville’s 16th novel. Our narrator-protagonist is a painter called Oliver Orme. We are in Ireland,…
