Books
No mappa mundi
As a boy I spent quite a lot of my free time trying to fake up ancient-looking documents. This hopeless…
Time trials
The European philosophical tradition, Alfred North Whitehead claimed, consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. If you really want…
Battle scars
The author of this primer to the long-overdue Chilcot report, a retired sapper (Royal Engineers) major-general, nails his colours to…
Friend or foe?
One fine day in June 1896, a lone Russian nihilist visited Leo Tolstoy on his country estate. Come to hear…
Buffoonery
Not so much striding across the political landscape as huffing and puffing his way through the back rooms, Clive Palmer…
1386 and all that
Sam Leith describes the frequently lonely, squalid and hapless life of the father of English poetry
Going to pot
Since drugs became popular, there have been countless books on what to do with them. The most interesting are those…
Dizzy with devotion
The long, happy and unlikely marriage of the great Conservative leader Disraeli and his wife Mary Anne, 12 years his…
Silent knight
In February 1861 a 21-year-old French medievalist called Paul Meyer walked into Sotheby’s auction house near Covent Garden. He had…
‘J’adore Michel’
News of Michel Houllebecq’s Soumission caused such a stir that the book was pirated online before publication. David Sexton reports on the latest literary event in France
Title Stories: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
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Finding the key to life
Which of us, as an adolescent, did not experience at some point a terrible sense of not belonging? Which of…
A master of plein-airism
‘If I see something I like I wish to tell someone else; this… is why I paint.’ Patrick George is…
Books and arts
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Title Stories: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
The post Title Stories: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion…
Title Stories: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
‘J’adore Michel’
Michel Houellebecq’s sixth novel, imagining an Islamic government taking power in France in 2022, has been widely assumed to be…
‘J’adore Michel’
Michel Houellebecq’s sixth novel, imagining an Islamic government taking power in France in 2022, has been widely assumed to be…
Pearls before swine
Philip Hensher bewails the current neglect of the short story, especially in the British literary press
When my enemy’s enemy is still my enemy
‘I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.’ When ‘The…
Peeking into the seraglio
If you like to curl up by the fire with a proper, old-fashioned, saga-style tale about a boy and his…
Title stories: The moon and sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham
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Dirty white gold
If not for cotton, we would still be wearing wool. To equal current cotton production, we would need seven billion…
A great visual sermon
In 1439 Abraham of Souzdal, a Russian bishop visiting Florence, was in the audience in Santa Maria del Carmine for…
Beautiful dreamer
Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had…
