Books

Samuel Beckett walks into a nail bar

29 March 2014 9:00 am

It isn’t very often that a writer’s work is so striking that you can remember exactly where and when you…

Witnesses in the heart of darkness

29 March 2014 9:00 am

When presented with a 639-page doorstopper which includes 82 pages of closely-written sources, notes and index, most of us feel…

The Vikings arrive in England during the second wave of migration (Scandinavian school, 10th century)

Civilisation’s watery superhighway

29 March 2014 9:00 am

The clue is in the title: this is not about the blue-grey-green wet stuff that covers 70 per cent of…

When posters told us our place

29 March 2014 9:00 am

As a sign of the way things have changed, nothing could better this. Hester Vaizey, Cambridge history don and ‘publishing…

Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon survive the Blitz in Mrs Miniver (1942).Churchill reckoned it was ‘worth six war divisions’ and Goebbels considered it an ‘exemplary propaganda film’, but to Lillian Hellman it was‘a piece of junk’

When Mussolini came knocking on Hollywood’s door

29 March 2014 9:00 am

John Ford was the first of the five famous Hollywood film directors to go to war. He went expecting to…

‘A dandy aesthete with visions of sacrificial violence’

29 March 2014 9:00 am

Eschewing the biblical advertising of ‘the promised land’ or indeed ‘a land of milk and honey’, the Conservative colonial secretary…

Whistling is a bloody nuisance

29 March 2014 9:00 am

Paul McCartney says he can remember the exact moment he knew the Beatles had made it. Early one morning, getting…

An Orpen fest: ‘Self-portrait’, 1917, by William Orpen

Books and Arts

29 March 2014 9:00 am

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Hero and villain

29 March 2014 9:00 am

There is a story told of Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister speaking with his Treasurer, Bill Hayden. It is late…

Management consultancy! Sculpture park! Sports stadium! The many faces of the Delphic Oracle

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Sam Leith finds the most sacred site of Ancient Greece still a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

‘A public urinal where ministers and officials queued up to leak’

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Anyone brought up as I was in a Daily Express household in the 1950s — there were approaching 11 million…

Småland

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Småland’s wooden cottages with sunflowers lack nothing. Brightly-painted, small in the distance like stories, they call the eye on and…

Fleet Street’s ‘wild Irish girl’

22 March 2014 9:00 am

In her early days on Fleet Street, Mary Kenny, as she herself admits, was cast as ‘the wild Irish girl’,…

Recycling Sackville-West style

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Here’s a book co-authored by one dead woman and one living one. Sarah Raven is the second wife of Adam…

The thrill of cutting into a human brain

22 March 2014 9:00 am

In the first sentence of the first chapter of this book, Henry Marsh, a consultant brain surgeon, says, ‘I often…

Caught between a New Age rock and a theory junkie hard place

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Siri Hustvedt’s new novel isn’t exactly an easy read — but the casual bookshop browser should be reassured that it’s…

Memoirs of an academic brawler  

22 March 2014 9:00 am

It’s a misleading title, because there is nothing unexpected about Professor Carey, in any sense. He doesn’t turn up to…

The making of a novelist

22 March 2014 9:00 am

Karl Ove Knausgaard was eight months old when his family moved to the island of Tromøya; he left it aged…

'Marcia painting her self-portrait’; detail from Boccaccio’s On Famous Women (1402)

The selfie from Akhenaten to Tracey Emin

22 March 2014 9:00 am

If ever there was a time to write a book about self-portraits, this must be it.  ‘Past interest in the…

The talent and tragedy of Richard Pryor

22 March 2014 9:00 am

The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via…

Books and Arts

22 March 2014 9:00 am

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Cracking up

20 March 2014 3:00 pm

The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via…

Småland

20 March 2014 3:00 pm

Småland’s wooden cottages with sunflowers lack nothing. Brightly-painted, small in the distance like stories, they call the eye on and…

Cracking up

20 March 2014 3:00 pm

The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via…

Småland

20 March 2014 3:00 pm

Småland’s wooden cottages with sunflowers lack nothing. Brightly-painted, small in the distance like stories, they call the eye on and…