Books
Home sweet home
‘Phlogiston’ is an interesting, if obsolete, word. Of Greek origin, it referred to the ‘fire-making’ quality thought to be present…
Extra-ordinary
A calculated ordinariness unites the protagonists in Graham Swift’s new collection of short stories. In each of these mini fictions,…
Don’t do as I do
Over the past 12 months, I’ve proposed to my girlfriend, moved house, got married, and become a father. The most…
How to rule the world
Genghis Khan, unlike most Mongols in history, is a household name, regularly misappropriated as a right-wing totem. If we recall…
My Grandmother Said
It was the First World War. Her husband was away. So she knew fear, but also found new freedom in…
Through her eyes only
Sybille Bedford all her life was a keen and courageous traveller. Restless, curious, intellectually alert, she was always ready to…
The way we live now
Once upon a time, a powerful unkillable beast menaced the nation. It had to be tamed. It could only be…
The king is dead – get over it
With Elvis has Left the Building, the longstanding editor of GQ has inexplicably written a book that could serve as…
I, spy
There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…
Books and arts
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Labor partisan’s economic tale
The old saw about economics being a dismal science turns out, on the evidence of this short but interesting piece…
I, spy
There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…
My Grandmother Said
It was the First World War. Her husband was away. So she knew fear, but also found new freedom in…
I, spy
There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…
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…
