Books
Cracking up
The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via…
Småland
Småland’s wooden cottages with sunflowers lack nothing. Brightly-painted, small in the distance like stories, they call the eye on and…
Cracking up
The troubles of Richard Pryor’s life are well known — from his childhood in a brothel to his self-immolation via…
Småland
Småland’s wooden cottages with sunflowers lack nothing. Brightly-painted, small in the distance like stories, they call the eye on and…
Delhi’s underbelly
India’s vast polluted capital, where brutality, corruption and ruthless self-seeking are endemic, could be the blueprint of the future, says Peter Parker
Decades of grievances
Historians have generally not been kind in their assessment of Britain’s first two Stuart kings. Their political skills are regarded…
Adventures in gay Paree
In his preface to The Joy of Gay Sex (revised and expanded third edition), Edmund White praises the ‘kinkier’ aspects…
Lambs to the slaughter
In his new novel, Children of Paradise, Fred D’Aguiar, a British-Guyanese writer, returns to the Jonestown massacre, previously the subject…
Licence to talk dirty
There aren’t many jobs that allow a nice middle-class Jewish boy to say ‘fuck’ in front of his parents. But…
A hidden gem
One of the many charms of this book is its sheer unexpectedness, which makes it hard to review, for to…
One queen, cut by two others
Queen Victoria was the inventor of official royal biography. It was she who commissioned the monumental five-volume life of Prince…
No dumb waiter
Comedians always like to claim that they started making jokes after childhoods made harsh by poverty; that at a formative…
Setting Kerouac on the road
In 1944, when he was 22, Jack Kerouac lost a manuscript — in a taxi, as he thought, but probably…
A book for all ages
The genesis of The Road to Middlemarch was a fine article in the New Yorker about Rebecca Mead’s unsuccessful search…
On trial for her life
Kate Colquhoun sets herself a number of significant challenges in her compelling new book, Did She Kill Him? Like Kate…
Books and Arts
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The right sort of chap
Kim Philby’s treachery escaped detection for so long through the stupidity and snobbery of the old-boy network surrounding him, says Philip Hensher
The Guardian vs the Hobbits
Last summer a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor called Edward Snowden leaked a vast trove of secret information on the…
The corpse in the cupboard
The single most terrifying moment of my adult life occurred at 8.55 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday 5 August…
The Great Game in Arabia
How do you write a new book about T.E. Lawrence, especially when the man himself described his escapades, or a…
Lords and protectors
There are still some sizeable holes in early modern English history and one of them is what we know —…
Plucky little Denmark
Of all the statistics generated by the Holocaust, perhaps some of the most disturbing in the questions they give rise…
Damaged love
Any new book by Lorrie Moore is a cause for rejoicing, but her first collection of short stories for 16…
Crowd Hunters of Images
remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner presence without value is perceived as occupation today we…
A later beginner
‘On the whole I think you should write biographies of those you admire and respect, and novels about human beings…
