Books
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…
An elephant in our midst
On 15 September 1885, the world’s most famous elephant, Jumbo, was killed by a train. Jumbo, the star attraction at…
Guns and neuroses
William S. Burroughs lived his life in the grand transgressive tradition of Lord Byron and Oscar Wilde and, like all…
The halo slips further
Tom Bower’s first biography of Sir Richard Branson, in 2000, was memorable for its hilarious account of the Virgin tycoon’s…
Unmade in Chelsea
Once below a time (to quote the man himself) the bloated poet Dylan Thomas slouched back to New York’s Chelsea…
Books and Arts
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The new Garnaut Report
Yes, economics really is a dismal science, if this book is to be believed. Even when things are going right,…
The lure of Europe
A tour of the Continent was a prerequisite for young Jacobean noblemen training for statesmanship — provided they resisted its corrupting influence, says Blair Worden
The game of consequences
No one alive now has any adult experience of the first world war, but still it shows no sign of…
Portrait of a marriage
In Never Mind Miss Fox, Olivia Glazebrook’s second novel, the revelation of a long buried secret releases a Pandora’s Box…
Love in a Cold War climate
Sex, spies, aristocrats and atom bombs — the Profumo affair is in the news again, thanks to the recent Andrew…
Ornithology
‘The Wood Thrush can sing a duet by itself, using Two separate voices,’ as opposed To the whip-bird, one cry,…
Charming the princes
The ‘dollar princesses’, those American heiresses who crossed the Atlantic in search of a titled husband, are familiar figures from…
Modern-day Leviathans
If a time traveller were to arrive in our world from, say, 1514 — a neat half-millennium away — what…
Dublin diversion
On his deathbed in Dublin in the spring of 1966, Flann O’Brien must have been squiffy from tots of Paddy.…
Georgian romp
London, 1794. It’s a different world from that portrayed by the Mrs Radcliffes and Anons of the time: rich young…
Jaipur Notebook
In 2004, ten days after I moved my family to a new life in India, I gave a reading at…
Books and Arts
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Jaipur Notebook
In 2004, ten days after I moved my family to a new life in India, I gave a reading at…
Ornithology
‘The Wood Thrush can sing a duet by itself, using Two separate voices,’ as opposed To the whip-bird, one cry,…
Jaipur Notebook
In 2004, ten days after I moved my family to a new life in India, I gave a reading at…
Ornithology
‘The Wood Thrush can sing a duet by itself, using Two separate voices,’ as opposed To the whip-bird, one cry,…
Books and Arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
