Books
The very odd couple
Ian Thomson on a miserable mismatch that became the talk of Buenos Aires in the Sixties
From pillar to crag
At the opposite end of the Continent to ourselves, Sicily has always been an attraction for the English who, from…
Hints of beauty
This stout and well-designed volume nicely complements Tim Hilton’s classic biography of John Ruskin. It is the catalogue for the…
Who’s raiding the fridge?
There is a problem with describing what happens in Nagasaki: impossible to reveal much of the plot without flagging up…
Mildly indigestible
Fiction ‘So how come we’re in the same book?’ Paul from The Stranger’s Child asked Florence from On Chesil Beach.…
A shot in the dark
Amid the vast tonnage of recent books about the first world war this must be the most unusual — and…
Anthem for lost youth
Patrick McGuinness’s prose trembles on the edge of poetry, occasionally indeed tipping gently over into it. This is thoroughly characteristic…
Hamlet without the prince
In the summer of 1955 a group of finals students trooped into a classroom at the Royal Academy of Dramatic…
Models for Marlowe
If the inclusion of the erstwhile master of the genre, Raymond Chandler, as a fictonalised character in a pastiche 1930s…
The rubble of the past
The term ‘psychological thriller’ is an elastic one these days, tagged liberally on to any story of suspense that explores…
Tripping through psychedelia
Hugo Williams describes his early association with The Exploding Galaxy — a group of innovative artists, musicians, poets and dancers that burst on the London scene in the late 1960s
Biting back
Edward St Aubyn’s new novel is a jauntily malicious satire on literary prizes in general, the Man Booker Prize in…
For God, King and Country
Flags and flowers: three bloody years worked in silk. At the needle’s eye stand easy, ghost, slip through my fingers…
Mastering a dead language…
The wisest words about learning Latin were said by that gifted prep-school boy, Nigel Molesworth: ‘Actually, it is quite easy…
… and beefing up a living one
I’ve always said that speech is my second language, so naturally I’m somewhat slang-shy; I love words all written down…
Books and arts
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Tripping through psychedelia
The Exploding Galaxy flashed brightly in the black-and-white world that was just coming to an end as I was growing…
For God, King and Country
Flags and flowers: three bloody years worked in silk. At the needle’s eye stand easy, ghost, slip through my fingers…
Tripping through psychedelia
The Exploding Galaxy flashed brightly in the black-and-white world that was just coming to an end as I was growing…
For God, King and Country
Flags and flowers: three bloody years worked in silk. At the needle’s eye stand easy, ghost, slip through my fingers…
Up close and personal
In recycling his most intimate encounters as fiction – including amazing feats of promiscuity in small-town New England – John Updike drew unashamedly on his own experiences for inspiration, says Philip Hensher
The poor man in his castle
Servicemen used paintings as dartboards. Schoolchildren dismantled banisters and paneling for firewood. Architects from the Ministry of Works acted like…
Recent crime fiction
Louise Welsh rarely repeats herself, a quality to celebrate in a crime novelist. Her latest novel, A Lovely Way to…
X marks the stop
In 1964, as part of his railway cuts, Dr Beeching ordered the closure of Duncraig, a small, little-used station in…
Prisoners of conscience
Thomas Keneally has constructed his latest novel around a framework of true events: the mass break-out of Japanese PoWs from…
