Books
Gavrilo Princip – history's ultimate teenage tearaway
Amid the vast tonnage of recent books about the first world war this must be the most unusual — and…
Half-poetry, half-prose, half-Belgian – and not half bad
Patrick McGuinness’s prose trembles on the edge of poetry, occasionally indeed tipping gently over into it. This is thoroughly characteristic…
Bitchiness gets in the way of the Gielgoodies
In the summer of 1955 a group of finals students trooped into a classroom at the Royal Academy of Dramatic…
What would Raymond Chandler do?
If the inclusion of the erstwhile master of the genre, Raymond Chandler, as a fictonalised character in a pastiche 1930s…
It’s not nice being used and abused
The term ‘psychological thriller’ is an elastic one these days, tagged liberally on to any story of suspense that explores…
A cult of inspired amateurishness that seized the 60s
Hugo Williams describes his early association with The Exploding Galaxy — a group of innovative artists, musicians, poets and dancers that burst on the London scene in the late 1960s
Shooting prize-dispensing fish in literary barrels
Edward St Aubyn’s new novel is a jauntily malicious satire on literary prizes in general, the Man Booker Prize in…
For God, King and Country
Flags and flowers: three bloody years worked in silk. At the needle’s eye stand easy, ghost, slip through my fingers…
To be topp at lat., throw your Cambridge Latin Course away
The wisest words about learning Latin were said by that gifted prep-school boy, Nigel Molesworth: ‘Actually, it is quite easy…
The book that brought out the Lady Bracknell in me
I’ve always said that speech is my second language, so naturally I’m somewhat slang-shy; I love words all written down…
Books and arts
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Tripping through psychedelia
The Exploding Galaxy flashed brightly in the black-and-white world that was just coming to an end as I was growing…
For God, King and Country
Flags and flowers: three bloody years worked in silk. At the needle’s eye stand easy, ghost, slip through my fingers…
Tripping through psychedelia
The Exploding Galaxy flashed brightly in the black-and-white world that was just coming to an end as I was growing…
For God, King and Country
Flags and flowers: three bloody years worked in silk. At the needle’s eye stand easy, ghost, slip through my fingers…
Up close and personal
In recycling his most intimate encounters as fiction – including amazing feats of promiscuity in small-town New England – John Updike drew unashamedly on his own experiences for inspiration, says Philip Hensher
What most imperilled country houses in the 20th century was taxes and death duties, not requisition
Servicemen used paintings as dartboards. Schoolchildren dismantled banisters and paneling for firewood. Architects from the Ministry of Works acted like…
Recent crime fiction
Louise Welsh rarely repeats herself, a quality to celebrate in a crime novelist. Her latest novel, A Lovely Way to…
The train stations that don’t really exist
In 1964, as part of his railway cuts, Dr Beeching ordered the closure of Duncraig, a small, little-used station in…
An escape from New South Wales
Thomas Keneally has constructed his latest novel around a framework of true events: the mass break-out of Japanese PoWs from…
The gambler’s daily grind
Lord Doyle is a shrivelled English gambler frittering away his money and destroying his liver in the casinos of Macau.…
Beauty in beastly surroundings
The vast majority of books written about British gardens and their histories are concerned with large ones, made and maintained,…
Books and arts
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‘Qui, moi?’
In 2008, Bob Carr was on an ABC panel show, pontificating about the wisdom of decisions of the US Supreme…
Recent crime fiction
Louise Welsh rarely repeats herself, a quality to celebrate in a crime novelist. Her latest novel, A Lovely Way to…
