Books
Recent crime fiction
Louise Welsh rarely repeats herself, a quality to celebrate in a crime novelist. Her latest novel, A Lovely Way to…
Churchill was as mad as a badger. We should all be thankful
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
Ladies' hats were his waterlillies - the obsessive brilliance of Edgar Degas
Lucian Freud once said that ‘being able to draw well is the hardest thing — far harder than painting, as…
A Mughal Disneyland and a ripping yarn
Mysore, once the capital of a princely kingdom in South India, has lost its lustre. In Mahesh Rao’s darkly comic…
From Göring to Hemingway, via Coco Chanel – the dark glamour of the Paris Ritz at war
In Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen did a good job of showing how foolish it is to be obsessed by…
Sudan was always an invented country. Maybe we should invent it again
Sudan — a country that ceased to exist in 2011 — is or was one of the last untouristed wildernesses…
Roger Mortimer writes again
After Dear Lupin and Dear Lumpy, here’s a slightly more prosaically titled collection of letters from Roger Mortimer, longtime racing…
Start with a torpedo, and see where you go from there
Sebastian Barry’s new novel opens with a bang, as a German torpedo hits a supply ship bound for the Gold…
A thriller that breaks down the publishing office door
Like teenage children and their parents, authors and publishers have a symbiotic relationship characterised by well-justified irritation on both sides.…
Wonders written on the wall
‘Take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines … pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry…
Tea with Greta Garbo's decorator
Many people write, or at least used to write, fan letters to their film favourites. Usually all they received in…
Books and arts
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Letting go
We are not, by our nature, a militaristic people, and it is significant that our most well-known military venture was…
Our leaders have betrayed the noble worker. Oh really?
Alan Johnson cannot accept that the best days of the British working class are over
If you think Virginia Woolf’s novels are good, you should try her bread
I have to declare an interest: as a scion of the Bloomsbury Group, I was naturally brought up on their…
Don't let creative writing students read this book
One of these is by Lydia Davis, acclaimed American writer. One is not. They are whole pieces, by the way,…
Go east – the people get nicer, even if their dogs get nastier
When Nick Hunt first read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his youthful trudge across Europe in A Time of Gifts…
Why don't we have statues of Michael Oakeshott?
Who or what was Michael Oakeshott? How many of our fellow citizens — how many even of the readers of…
Pompeii’s greatest gifts are not all archeological
The first visitor to take a break on the Bay of Naples was Hercules. He had just defeated some rebellious…
There was good art under Franco
Everyone knows about the Spanish civil war, first battlefield in the struggle that broke out in 1936 and ended nine…
Charlie Chaplin, monster
No actual birth certificate for Charles Spencer Chaplin has ever been found. The actor himself drew a blank when he…
Arianna Huffington meets Madame de Menopause
A-Huff’s career has been remarkable for the contrast between hard-headed social advancement (‘the most upwardly mobile Greek since Icarus’) and…
An escape to the country that became a struggle for Poland's soul
In 1993, John Borrell, a longtime foreign correspondent with no permanent home, decided to abandon journalism. Tired of writing about…
A Beckett fagend rescued from a bin
Spectator readers of my vintage will remember their first encounter with Beckett as vividly as their first lover’s kiss. For…
The diary that proves Anthony Seldon wrong about the first world war and the public schools
In March 1915 the 27th Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, with an already distinguished political career behind him, took the…
