Books
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…
Books and Arts
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Crowd Hunters of Images
remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner presence without value is perceived as occupation today we…
Crowd Hunters of Images
remains are handled in a culturally sensitive and religiously appropriate manner presence without value is perceived as occupation today we…
From post office girl to woman of letters
Melanie McDonagh on Flora Thompson, whose revealing account of rural Oxfordshire life at the turn of the 19th century became a literary classic
Outfoxed in the desert
What an unedifying affair the war in the North African desert was, at least until November 1942 and the victory…
Flirting with magic realism
A preview of Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird appeared in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists issue in April last…
Recent crime fiction
Stuart MacBride’s new novel, A Song for the Dying (HarperCollins, £16.99, Spectator Bookshop, £14.99), is markedly darker in tone than…
That’s not entertainment
You can learn a lot from this book. Latin America has a smaller economy than Europe. Big companies can spend…
Sins of the fathers
I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I admitted something of…
Nasty, brutish — and much too long
George Kennan, the career diplomat and historian best known for his sensible suggestion that the United States try to resist…
An old-fashioned English eccentric
Daniel Swift 1 March 2014 9:00 am
The traditional story told about the first world war is that it changed everything: that it was the end of…