Books
Dining with a Picasso
We had decided to dine out with our latest Picasso. The Picasso sat at the head of our table. It…
Shame and blame
At the recent Austin Film Festival, at every ruminative panel or round-table discussion I attended, I slapped my copy of…
Captain courageous
Andrew Strauss is a serious man and Driving Ambition (Hodder, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £18) is a serious book. It looks…
Captain courageous
Andrew Strauss is a serious man and Driving Ambition (Hodder, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £18) is a serious book. It looks…
Captain courageous
Andrew Strauss is a serious man and Driving Ambition (Hodder, £20, Spectator Bookshop, £18) is a serious book. It looks…
Books of the Year
Recommended reading from some of our regular reviewers
How to enrich your life
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
Spoilt for choice
Nigel Simeone’s title for his edition of Leonard Bernstein’s correspondence rings compellingly, novellistically, through the force of the definite article,…
Thirty years on
Cig 1 Auld Reekie . . . Edinburgh . . . brewers’ town, stinking of beer, whisky, tweeness, gentility, hypocrisy,…
For the fallen
We constantly need to be reminded that the consequence of war is death. In the case of the first world…
Strength in numbers
Numbers, as every mathematician knows, do odd things. But they’re never odder than in the human context. Ever since we…
Strong meat
Fans of Count Arthur Strong (and yes I know he’s so Marmite you could spread him on a cheese sandwich)…
A choice of gardening books
I’ll own up at once. Tim Richardson and Andrew Lawson, the author and photographer of The New English Garden (Frances…
Sleeping with the enemy
Around 200 Englishwomen lived through the German Occupation of Paris. Nicholas Shakespeare’s aunt Priscilla was one. Men in the street…
Too many Cooks…
It’s no joke, writing about comedians. Their work is funny, their lives are not. Rightly honouring the former while accurately…
Thinking outside the box
Everyone loves an anniversary and the crossword world — if there is such a thing — has been waiting a…
No country for old men
‘Is he a good writer? Is he pro-regime?’ an Iranian journalist in London once asked me of Hooman Majd. Majd…
The house-party from hell
It is perhaps the most celebrated house-party in the history of literary tittle-tattle: a two-house-party to be precise. Byron and…
Remembering Andro Linklater
For 24 years Andro Linklater, who died aged 68 on 3 November, reviewed books in these pages. Always an enthusiast,…
Books and Arts
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Mining magnate paradox
In many ways, Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest has become the likeable face of the Australian mining boom, a self-made billionaire without…
Two cheers for Bowen
Since I know Speccie readers like a bit of a shock, let me oblige: I think Chris Bowen is a…
Books and Arts
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Nationalist stirrings
Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music
The good companion
‘Goodbye to the Mezzogiorno’ was the first Auden poem that Alexander McCall Smith read in his youth. He discovered it…
