Books
Trying to keep afloat
The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…
Books and Arts
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The Huguenots, by Geoffrey Treasure - review
There could be no backsliding while preparing the next plot, murder or battle in the French Wars of Religion, says Hywel Williams
This Town, by Mark Leibovich - review
Many books have been written about the corruption, venality and incestuousness that characterise Washington DC, but none has been as…
Red or Dead by David Peace - review
The last time David Peace wrote a novel about football he got his publishers sued for libel, which may help…
A Classless Society, by Alwyn W. Turner - review
The title of Alwyn W. Turner’s book could deter readers. Even the Hollywood film The Secret Lives of Dentists promised…
Tangier, by Josh Shoemake - review
This may sound a little orientalist, but Tangier has some claim to being the most foreign city in the world.…
The Good Nurse, by Charles Graeber - review
Charles Cullen, an American nurse, murdered several hundred patients by the administration in overdose of restricted drugs. Hospitals should be…
The Rainborowes, by Adrian Tinniswood - review
Adrian Tinniswood, so gifted and spirited a communicator of serious history to a wide readership, here brings a number of…
A Rogues’ Gallery, by Peter Lewis - review
Like Mel Brooks’s character the Two Thousand-Year-Old Man, Peter Lewis has met everyone of consequence. Though he doesn’t mention being…
Philip Hensher reviews the Man Booker prize longlist
The Man Booker prize has strong years and weak years. There have been ones when the judges have succeeded in…
The Email About Writing the Poem
I’ve been occupying myself trying to write a long-ish poem. It’s an odd sensation writing a poem. You’re trying to…
Fairfax under fire
What a spectacle. A Fairfax journalist flanked by a beaming James Packer, making no secret of his loathing for her…
The Selected Letters of Willa Cather, edited by Andrew Jewell - review
Richard Davenport-Hines on the tomboy from Red Cloud whose evocation of the vast, unforgiving landscape of the prairies is unrivalled
A Bright Moon for Fools, by Jasper Gibson - review
Harry Christmas, the central character of this bitterly funny debut novel, is a middle- aged, overweight alcoholic, with no friends…
An Armenian Sketchbook, by Vasily Grossman - review
Vasily Grossman, a Ukranian-born Jew, was a war correspondent for the Soviet army newspaper Red Star. His dispatches from the…
Migration Hotspots, by Tim Harris - review
Consider for a moment the plight of the willow warbler. Russian birds of this species fly between eastern Siberia and…
Bitter Experience Has Taught Me, by Nicholas Lezard - review
What, really, is a literary education for? What’s the point of it? How, precisely, does it help when you’re another…
Decorous Confessions
Unexpectedly, he made a sober success with his self-published book of decorous confessions. It eschewed turmoil in the bedchamber and…
As Green as Grass, by Emma Smith - review
The title, the subtitle, the author’s plain name, even the jacket’s photograph of a laughing old lady in sunglasses: none…
The Girl Who Loved Camellias, by Julie Kavanagh - review
Verdi’s La Traviata is the story of a courtesan who is redeemed when she gives up the man she loves…
The Coronation Chair and the Stone of Scone, by Warwick Rodwell - review
The Coronation Chair currently stands all spruced up, following last year’s conservation, under a crimson canopy, by the west entrance…
They Eat Horses, Don’t They?, by Piu Marie Eatwell - review
Oh the French! Where would the Anglo publishing industry be without them? Ever since Peter Mayle first made goo-goo eyes…
Books and Arts
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Born to rule
Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese Communist Party is either the last non-ridiculous bastion of Marxism, an…
