Books
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…
A bad novel on the way to a good one
Philip Hensher on the tangled history of To Kill a Mockingbird’s much-anticipated ‘sequel’
Lovely house of ill repute
Well, you can’t say he wasn’t warned. Swimming pools, Nancy Astor told her son, Bill, were ‘disgustin’. I don’t trust…
Reality games
The title of Victor Pelevin’s 2011 novel stands for ‘Special Newsreel/Universal Feature Film’. This product is made by the narrator,…
The rich are a different species
The scene: a funeral parlour in New York. Doors clang as a family relative, the ‘black sheep’, saunters in halfway…
Mission near impossible
Operation Thunderbolt was, Saul David contends in this gripping book, ‘the most audacious special forces operation in history’. In June…
One événement after another
The great conundrum of French history is the French Revolution, or rather, the sequence of revolutions, coups and insurrections during…
