Books
Low, dishonest decade
When Gordon Brown eventually became aware that his Downing Street was about to be engulfed in the Smeargate scandal, he…
Court chronicler for the coalition
There are two ways of being a political journalist. One is to stay on the outside and try to avoid…
Child-swapping opium addicts…
The last time the general reader was inveigled into the domestic intensities of the Wordsworth circle was by Frances Wilson…
…and murderous, child-molesting mystics
Though alcohol withdrawal is potentially fatal, booze has none of the media-confected glitz of heroin (imagine Will Self boasting of…
on not answering
I was late for dinner not because I wanted to exercise restraint but because I wanted to hear them calling…
Very clever Mr Boyd, but not clever enough
First, an appalling admission: I have never read any of Ian Fleming’s Bond books. Nor have I read any of…
A parable of human weakness
Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Books and Arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
In praise of Ming
At the end of this affectionate memoir of Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies, Heather Henderson recognises some might see…
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Books and Arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Gay abandon
Richard Davenport-Hines on the charmed, dizzy world of the multi-talented Colette
Lovely, enchanting language
When John Drury, himself an Anglican divine, told James Fenton (the son of a canon of Christ Church) that he…
Vichy from the inside
There can be few characters in modern fiction more unpleasant than Paul-Jean Husson, the narrator in Romain Slocombe’s Monsieur le…
Dishing the dirt
Is poetry in good enough health to be made fun of in this way? The irony is that this long,…
Cheap and cheerful
Mrs Thatcher was widely believed to have said that ‘any man over the age of 26 who finds himself on…
No use crying over spilt blood
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter begins in the hours immediately following the solemn victory parade that marked the…
Giving Jonathan a drubbing
Peter Snow explains that he decided to look into this extraordinary story when he realised how few people knew about…
An elegant command
Alan Bennett once overheard an old lady say, ‘I think a knighthood was wasted on Derek Jacobi,’ and I know…
Basic instincts
What do women want? You might have thought the Wife of Bath had got this one sorted, but Daniel Bergner…
The rise of the politicians
This book expresses what is being more and more widely felt in English-speaking and other western countries: government is becoming…
Books and Arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Darling Flufftail … beloved Pinkpaws
The correspondence between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy is good for celebrity-spotting but too cloyingly self-absorbed to be of wider interest, says D. J. Taylor
