Books
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…
The end of secrecy
Gordon Corera, best known as the security correspondent for BBC News, somehow finds time to write authoritative, well-researched and readable…
Last day
None of the teachers who taught us were around that final afternoon at Grammar school — probably frightened of being…
An exquisite flowering of talent
It seems odd that a singer, musician, television performer and sculptor who typified the 1960s as vividly as Rory McEwen…
Nimble-witted wanderer
It was a certain unforgettable ex-girlfriend, Harry Mount confesses — named only as ‘S’ in his dedication — who came…
Poison and parsnip wine
First, a quote from the novel under review. The context: it is a flashback scene of the behaviour of a…
From Major to minor
‘Lobbying,’ writes William Waldegrave in this extraordinary memoir, ‘takes many forms.’ But he has surely reported a variant hitherto unrecorded…
Amanda
When I didn’t recognise the number and saw the text with kisses, but no name — ‘Thinking of you: they’re…
Amanda
When I didn’t recognise the number and saw the text with kisses, but no name — ‘Thinking of you: they’re…
Last day
None of the teachers who taught us were around that final afternoon at Grammar school — probably frightened of being…
Amanda
When I didn’t recognise the number and saw the text with kisses, but no name — ‘Thinking of you: they’re…
Last day
None of the teachers who taught us were around that final afternoon at Grammar school — probably frightened of being…
