Books
My Grandmother Said
It was the First World War. Her husband was away. So she knew fear, but also found new freedom in…
The tyrant and the cloud-dweller
The banning of Dr Zhivago in the Soviet Union had unfortunate consequences for other fine 20th-century Russian novels, says Robert Chandler
How to write a novel
At a time when feminism is grimly engaged in disappearing up its own intersection (two transsexuals squabbling over a tampon…
Bare-faced lies
Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes…
Brilliant, devoted and beautiful
‘Curious to see Mrs Aveling addressing the enormous crowd, curious to see the eyes of the women fixed upon her…
Life as an outsider
The Emperor Waltz is long enough at 600 pages to be divided, in the old-fashioned way, into nine ‘books’. Each…
Dignity? Forget it!
It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make drawings of your own 97-year-old mother on her…
Life was a ball
This is the Real Thing, an evocative account of English upper-class life throughout the 20th century. It begins amidst the…
The boa constrictor observes its prey
Few subjects generate as much angst, or puzzlement, among Western policymakers in Africa as China’s presence on the continent. In…
Books and arts
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Perils of activist judges
Democracy in ancient Athens was often criticised by the aristocracy for not showing significant respect for them and their superior…
A rake’s progress
Philip Hensher on the scandalous 17th-century courtier whose hellfire reputation has overshadowed his fine satirical poetry
A fool’s paradise
A couple of years ago in Jamaica, I met Errol Flynn’s former wife, the screen actress Patrice Wymore. Reportedly a…
The kindness of strangers
It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome…
Recent crime novels
The publisher has whipped up a tsunami of excitement around The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (translated from the…
Seeing Dante anew
Reading Dante is an experience of a lifetime. You never come to the end of it. But, like Dante himself,…
More ugly truths
Steven D. Levitt was a Harvard economist who specialised in politics and spent a lot of time watching cop shows…
Extreme poetic licence
On Laurie Lee’s centenary, Jeremy Treglown wonders how the writer’s legacy stands up
Spoken For
What I want to tell you is I can dream with my eyes wide open, like riding a bicycle without…
Gossip with a kind heart
J.K. Rowling’s second novel under the Robert Galbraith moniker is a whodunit set in the publishing industry. This isn’t a…
Books and arts
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Labor renewal?
Ben Chifley once spoke about a shining light on the hill. By the time that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard…
Extreme poetic licence
He was always lucky, and he knew it: lucky in the secure rural intimacy of the upbringing described in Cider…
Spoken For
What I want to tell you is I can dream with my eyes wide open, like riding a bicycle without…
Extreme poetic licence
He was always lucky, and he knew it: lucky in the secure rural intimacy of the upbringing described in Cider…
