Books
Lady in waiting
The actor David Niven was once badgered by the American columnist William F. Buckley to introduce him to Marc Chagall,…
A romantic dream
‘On the night of 15 April 1897, a small, elegant steamer is en route from Egypt’s Port Said to Jaffa.’…
After the funeral
I first mistook David Gilbert’s second novel for the sort of corduroy-sleeved family saga at which American writers excel. The…
Christianity’s moral revolution
If there is one underlying source from which all our other societal problems stem, it is surely this: we no…
The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion
This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of…
A choice of first novels
The intensely lyrical Ghost Moth is set in Belfast in 1969, as the Troubles begin and when Katherine, housewife and…
Books and Arts
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The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion
This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of…
The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion
This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of…
Soldier, statesman, sovereign
Alan Rush admires the humane, enlightened Faisal I, who fought with T.E. Lawrence and devoted his life to Arab rights, independence and unity
Man of steel and glass
Modern Architecture, capitalised thus, is now securely and uncontroversially compartmentalised into art history, its bombast muted, its hard-edge revolutions blurred…
Angel of mercy or angel of death?
On 28 August 2005 — Sheri Fink’s Day One — Hurricane Katrina reached New Orleans. The National Weather Service warned…
The great pamphlet war
What is the origin of left and right in politics? The traditional answer is that these ideas derive from the…
A place of rough justice
There are writers whose prose style is so fluid, so easy, the reader feels as though he has been taken…
Plumes over the prairies
When John Buchan was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1935, the country was deep in depression, the western provinces…
Loss, grief and guilt
About 30 pages in and unable to find my bearings, I flipped to the end of this novel — well,…
Corpses and clichés
Isabel Allende is not an author one usually associates with the thrillers about serial killers. Ripper, however, lives up to…
A&E
If this waiting is hellish, then the sick are limbo dancing; only those who are bent double, or on the…
Books and Arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
A&E
If this waiting is hellish, then the sick are limbo dancing; only those who are bent double, or on the…
A&E
If this waiting is hellish, then the sick are limbo dancing; only those who are bent double, or on the…
The great land grab
The highly profitable — and intrinsically selfish — system of land ownership that replaced medieval feudal tenure had profound moral consequences that continue to this day, says John Adamson
A tireless networker
We critics seldom write our memoirs, perhaps because we skulk away our lives in dark corners, avoiding the public gaze,…
Back to her native roots
Like an old woman in a fairy story, Germaine Greer, now in her late seventies, has taken to lurking in…
Cats in feathers
Owls have more associations for us than perhaps any other family of birds, suggested Jeremy Mynott in Birdscapes, so it…
