Books
Grimmer — and no better
Child murder, domestic slavery, abusive families, cannibalism and intergenerational hatred — what could be better for the festive fireside than…
Travels in Nowhere Land
Transnistria is not an area well-served by travel literature or, really, literature of any kind. The insubstantial-seeming post-Soviet sandwich-filling between…
Books and arts
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Under the bed
The bogeyman of the ASIO agent under the bed has long been an obsession of the Left, and judging from…
Spot the Booker Prize winning books
The post Spot the Booker Prize winning books appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion…
Juliet Townsend (1941-2014)
A new literary editor looks among his acquaintance for potential reviewers. There was no one I approached more confidently in…
Sunset Hails a Rising
O lente, lente currite noctis equi!— Marlowe, after Ovid. La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée.—Valéry. Dying by inches, I…
In the Emergency School
We were registered as a form, and for the first day Left unsupervised alone in a distant room With empty…
Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
The post Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join…
Spot the Booker Prize winning books
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Juliet Townsend (1941-2014)
A new literary editor looks among his acquaintance for potential reviewers. There was no one I approached more confidently in…
Sunset Hails a Rising
O lente, lente currite noctis equi!— Marlowe, after Ovid. La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée.—Valéry. Dying by inches, I…
Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Serving Mammon first
The Saudis, official custodians of Islam’s holiest place, have bulldozed its historical sites, perverted its religion and turned Mecca into one vast shopping mall, says Justin Marozzi
The butt of jests and ribaldry
Few people, perhaps, will immediately seize on this title as just the thing for a relative’s Christmas, even if their…
Germ warfare within
Before I read this book, I imagined the immune system as a defensive force, like the Germans on the beaches…
No accounting for greed
Have you ever met a sane accountant? I ask, because one of the more striking sentences in A Theft runs:…
Tales of the Occupation
Earlier this year Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for the art of memory with which he has…
Title Stories: The Woman in White
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What you’ll never find in the road atlas
Picture the map of Britain. Its strangely cadaverous shape, blobs of population and routes between them seem as familiar as…
Staring into the abyss
The first interaction between two men recorded in the Bible involves a murder. In the earliest classic of English literature,…
Goodwill to Men
Overheard in advent was this complaint of a bus driver to a passenger, ‘Don’t call me brother! We’re not of…
Mao’s violent disciple
Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…
As No Art Is
The weekend’s on us, and no means of soothing it or kissing it away. The flat facades of mansion blocks…
In a world of their own
Cilla Black has become a strange creature during her 50 years in showbiz. When her husband Bobby was in hospital…
