Books
Spoken For
What I want to tell you is I can dream with my eyes wide open, like riding a bicycle without…
Quiet, calm consideration…
Alan Judd’s spy novels occupy a class of their own in the murky world of espionage fiction, partly because they…
Oh, what a tangled web
There aren’t many places you can get shouty about Proust without losing your job. The Lane Bookshop in Perth, Western…
No need for special pleading
To discover an ‘unknown’ is the dream of anyone connected with the arts and in Johannes Thopas (c.1626-1688/95) we have…
Funny, rude and tender
Viv Albertine is deservedly famous as the guitarist of the tumultuous, all-female English punk band The Slits. Their debut album,…
Cannon and ball
David Crane on an old soldier’s account of a 200-year-old battle that will never fade away
Talking tough
Last year a Washington-based journalist called Mark Leibovich wrote This Town, a book whose thesis was, roughly, that Washington-based journalists…
Doubly unexpected
Stephen King’s latest novel, Mr Mercedes, is dedicated to James M. Cain and described as ‘a riveting suspense thriller’ —…
Ice Sculpture
If I begged you to, would you hitchhike to the ice-sculpture factory, where the drunken cow was just presented, and…
Teething troubles
Paul O’Rourke, the narrator of Joshua Ferris’s third novel, is a dentist who spends his days staring into the murky…
Barflies and buccaneers
In February 1924 the Hotel Florida, a ten- storey marble-clad building with 200 rooms, a glass-roofed atrium and red plush…
A baking June
If I were the kind of person who invited people to come and have a bite to eat that very…
Amour fou
This novel is based on the life of Charles Baudelaire and the relationship he enjoyed — or endured — with…
All sorts and all sports
Sport isn’t about putting a ball into a net or over a bar or into a hole. It’s about the…
Those were the days
If you wanted a brief epigraph for Linda Grant’s recent fiction, then five words from Dorothy Parker might well do…
Books and arts
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Hawkish Hillary
If you were contemplating running for President of the United States, a national book tour would be a handy pointer…
Ice Sculpture
If I begged you to, would you hitchhike to the ice-sculpture factory, where the drunken cow was just presented, and…
Ice Sculpture
If I begged you to, would you hitchhike to the ice-sculpture factory, where the drunken cow was just presented, and…
Out of his depth
There are individuals who, when fate hands them the opportunity for greatness, have risen to the challenge. Rob Oakeshott was…
The incredible journey
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
The cardinal and the con artist
You usually know where you are with a book that promises the story ‘would violate the laws of plausibility’ if…
To the lighthouse
Elements of Raffaella Barker’s new novel, her eighth for adults, suggest commercial fiction: a narrative that oscillates between the aftermath…
Shorthand
Might you not have found him a little exhausting, though? If, for example, you were his mother, not given to…
Opéra bouffe in New Hampshire
There ought to be a comic opera about the Bretton Woods conference — Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face, about Margaret,…
