Books
On your marks…
One day there simply won’t be any strange byways of the English language left to write quirky little books about.…
On your marks…
One day there simply won’t be any strange byways of the English language left to write quirky little books about.…
Divinely decadent
With an eye to the blasphemy underlying some of the loveliest Renaissance painting, Honor Clerk will be choosing her Christmas cards more carefully this year
To cull or not to cull?
Lord Arran was responsible for the bill to legalise homosexuality and a bill to protect badgers from gassing and terrier-baiting.…
Six of the best
When one notices the first symptoms of senile dementia (forgetting names, trying to remember the purpose of moving from one…
Tireless tuft-hunting
The novelist David Plante is French-Québécois by ancestry, grew up in a remote Francophone parish in Yankee New England and…
Darkness at dawn
On 12 April 1945 the Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance. The atmosphere in Germany was apocalyptic, the Allied invasion…
Not endearing, just wince-making
To understand quite how disgruntled the reviews of the latest Bridget Jones diaries have been, you have to recall quite…
Hidden gems
No one watches Antiques Roadshow for the antiques. Instead we’re hanging on the punter’s reaction to his three-grand valuation. ‘It…
Cheering for Shirley
Decent, clever, charming, eloquent, hard-working, conscientious and terribly, terribly nice, Shirley Williams is one of Britain’s best-loved politicians. Mark Peel’s…
Running on sex and chicken nuggets
What makes someone the fastest man on earth? The current tenant of the informal title held by such sporting icons…
Old hippies never die
We all know that if you can remember the Sixties you weren’t really there. But Graham Nash, of the Hollies,…
The missing word game
Mark Twain had a notoriously thorny relationship with German, a language he gamely tried to conquer. His main beef was…
Let them eat glue
Skip this book if you dislike dogs, or even if you are indifferent to them, or echo an acquaintance of…
Openly taking sides
This is a curious book. Its title and the name of its publisher suggest that it is going to be…
Grace under pressure
Ask any England cricket fan in his fifties to name his favourite batsman and chances are he will say David…
Books and Arts
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The world according to Bob
Apparently, Ellis believes that the year 2011 was as important as 1848. He never explains why, exactly. He seems to…
Grace under pressure
Ask any England cricket fan in his fifties to name his favourite batsman and chances are he will say David…
Grace under pressure
Ask any England cricket fan in his fifties to name his favourite batsman and chances are he will say David…
Diplomatic meltdown
In pre-1914 cosmopolitan society, everyone seemed to be related — ambassadors as well as monarchs. But increased militarisation was fast obliterating old family ties, says Jane Ridley
Breaking omertà
According to the medical historian Professor Sonu Shamdasani, Sigmund Freud was not the best, nor actually the most interesting, psychoanalyst…
From underdog to top dog
When we think of David and Goliath, we think of a young man, not very big, who has a fight…
Salad days
The early 1990s in Russia were hungry years. At the time, I was a student, too idle to barter and…
Dutch comfort
Donna Tartt is an expert practitioner of what David Hare has called ‘the higher hokum’. She publishes a long novel…
