Books
The Son, by Philipp Meyer - review
Colonel Eli McCullough, formerly known as Tiehteti, is a living legend. The first male child born in the Republic of…
The Ghosts of Happy Valley, by Juliet Barnes - review
Rift Valley, Kenya The other day when I told the headmaster of a top British public school that I came…
A Slap in the Face, by William B. irvine - review
A friend of mine who works for the NHS has been told recently by a superior that his ‘attention to…
Magic, by Ricky Jay - review
People, they say, want different things from a book over the summer than they do the rest of the year.…
Shire, by Ali Smith - review
Pastoral elegy is not what you expect to find in a collection of short stories, but then Ali Smith is…
Birds & People, by Mark Cocker - review
‘A world without birds would lay waste the human heart,’ writes Mark Cocker. Following his Birds Britannica and prize-winning Crow…
Books and Arts
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In the bunker
The rusted-on supporters of the ALP must wonder how it came to this. Six years ago, the ALP was on…
Books and arts
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Edwardian Opulence, edited by Angus Trumble - review
Margaret MacMillan says that the ostentation of the Edwardian Age focuses the mind painfully on the horror that was so quickly to follow
Wreaking, by James Scudamore - review
An abandoned lunatic asylum, a nasty pornographer in a wheelchair, a bizarre glass-ceilinged viewing dome beneath a scummy lake, a…
The Breath of Night, by Michael Arditti
There is always meat in Michael Arditti’s novels. He is a writer who presents moral problems via fiction but is…
Looking at Books by John Sutherland - essay
The sexy thing this summer, as the TV ads tell us, is the e-book. Forget those old 1,000-page blockbusters, two…
Niccolo Machiavelli, by Corrado Vivanti; The Garments of Court and Palace, by Philip Bobbitt
One more anniversary, one more cache of commemorative books. This time we are celebrating the half-millennium since Niccolò Machiavelli produced…
The Annals of Unsolved Crime, by Edward Jay Epstein - review
Edward Jay Epstein is an American investigative journalist, now in his late seventies, who has spent at least half a…
Land of Second Chances, by Tim Lewis - review
This is a book about Rwanda. It’s a book about cycling. But it’s not, in the end, a book about…
Waiting for the Train
Early spring cherry blossom by the tracks — so prim and so dirty, all at once. The bees must be…
What do conductors actually do? Review of 'Inside Conducting' by Christopher Seaman
Conductors love telling stories, especially stories about other conductors, and every chapter of this otherwise determinedly pragmatic book begins with…
Books and Arts
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Churchill and Empire, by Lawrence James - a review
Philip Hensher says that Churchill’s engagement with the empire does not reveal him at his finest hour
The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills - a review
Mark Mills is known for his historical and literary crime novels, including The Savage Garden, The Information Officer and House…
The People’s Songs, by Stuart Maconie - a review
For Stuart Maconie fans, this book might sound as if it’ll be his masterpiece. In his earlier memoirs and travelogues,…
The World is Ever Changing, by Nicolas Roeg - a review
‘Value and worth in any of the arts has always been about timing,’ writes British director Nicolas Roeg at the…
Saving Italy, by Robert M. Edsel - a review
During the civil war, the Puritan iconoclast William Dowsing recorded with satisfaction his destructive visit in 1644 to the parish…
Granta Best of Young British Novelists 4 - a review
This year marks the fourth Granta ‘Best of Young British novelists’, begun in 1983, but it is the first time…
