Books
As Luck Would Have It, by Derek Jacobi - review
Alan Bennett once overheard an old lady say, ‘I think a knighthood was wasted on Derek Jacobi,’ and I know…
Do women want what they say they want?
What do women want? You might have thought the Wife of Bath had got this one sorted, but Daniel Bergner…
The rise of the politicians
This book expresses what is being more and more widely felt in English-speaking and other western countries: government is becoming…
Books and Arts
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To 'Flufftail' from 'Pinkpaws': The Animals is only good for celebrity-spotting
The correspondence between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy is good for celebrity-spotting but too cloyingly self-absorbed to be of wider interest, says D. J. Taylor
Marriage Material, by Sathnam Sanghera - review
Sathnam Sanghera, in his family memoir The Boy with the Topknot, heaped much largely affectionate contempt and ridicule on his…
Wilkie Collins by Andrew Lycett - review
In the outrageous 2010 press hounding of the innocent schoolteacher Christopher Jefferies over the murder of his young female tenant…
The Story of the Jews, by Simon Schama - review
The recorder of early Jewish history has two sources of evidence. One is the Bible. Its centrality was brought home…
Isaac & Isaiah, by David Caute - review
The scene is the common room of All Souls College, Oxford, in the first week of March 1963. It is…
What’s in a Surname, by David McKie - review
In South Korea, some 20 million people share just five surnames. Every one of Denmark’s top 20 surnames ends in…
Bizarre Cars, by Keith Ray - review
My various Oxford dictionaries define bizarre as eccentric, whimsical, odd, grotesque, fantastic, mixed in style and half-barbaric. By so many…
Royal Marriage Secrets, by John Ashdown-Hill - review
My brother Pericles Wyatt, as my father liked to say, is by blood the rightful king of England, the nephew…
Stage Blood, by Michael Blakemore - review
Stage Blood, as its title suggests, is as full of vitriol, back-stabbing and conspiracy as any Jacobean tragedy. In this…
Pine by Laura Mason; Lily, by Marcia Reiss - review
After the success of their animal series of monographs, Reaktion Books have had the clever idea of doing something similar…
Hanns and Rudolf, by Thomas Harding - review
Confronted by this lavishly endorsed book — ‘compelling’ (David Lodge), ‘gripping’(John le Carré),‘thrilling’ (Jonathan Freedland) — I felt depressed. Two…
An Appetite for Wonder, by Richard Dawkins - review
It is peculiarly apt that the author of this autobiography should be the man who coined that now fashionable term…
Poker
To Dad You wonder if it’s worth the gamble getting up out of your armchair onto your bad leg, to…
Expo 58, by Jonathan Coe - review
In 1958 a vast international trade fair was held just outside Brussels. As well as being a showcase for industry,…
Why does Max Hastings have such a hatred for the British military?
David Crane is taken aback by the particular contempt Max Hastings appears to reserve for the British at the outbreak of the first world war
The Prince of medicine, by Susan P. Mattern - review
In the first draft of the screenplay for the film Gladiator, the character to be played by Russell Crowe (‘father…
The Windsor Faction, by D.J. Taylor - review
In both his novels and non-fiction, D. J. Taylor has long been fascinated by the period between the wars. Now…
Noble Endeavours, by Miranda Seymour - review
Like Miranda Seymour, the author of this considerable work on Anglo-German relations, I was raised in a Germanophile home. I…
Building a Bridge
I didn’t even have to say: No need to explain, I understand. It was in his look — Look after…
Narcoland, by Anabel Hernandez - review
It is by now surely beyond doubt that those governments committed to fighting the war on drugs — and on…
The Tragedy of Liberation, by Frank Dikötter - review
The historian of China Frank Dikötter has taken a sledgehammer to demolish perhaps the last remaining shibboleth of modern Chinese…
