Books
The way it was
There is a test in Canberra which applies to the quality of political commentary. It is called the ‘Blue Poles’…
Books and Arts
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Books of the Year
More recommended reading from some of our regular reviewers
Jack all alone
Ten years ago, a determined historian transformed our picture of John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek had finally got his hands…
Criminal damage
Anyone with a passing interest in old British buildings must get angry at the horrors inflicted on our town centres…
Evil under the sun
At the dark heart of this dark book is a startling fact: Joseph Conrad was employed to steam up the…
Worshipping from afar
In this travelogue, Matthew Baylis, the novelist and TV critic and former Eastenders screenwriter, goes to Tanna, a Melanesian island,…
Seeing double
The game that Charles Saatchi plays in The Naked Eye is to find photographs of subjects that look surprisingly like…
The long and winding road
If you have read Iain Sinclair’s books you will know that he is a stylist with a love of language.…
A choice of cookery books
Nigel Slater’s books lead the field in cookery book design, but his latest, Eat: The Little Book of Fast Food…
Violence was his vocation
Heroically brave and mad, prodigious in his industry and appetites, Norman Mailer was an altogether excessive figure. Since his death…
Past perfect
Some years ago, a woman wrote to Dear Mary, at the back of this periodical, with an unusual problem: she…
Pirates on parade
Hear the word ‘pirate’ and what picture springs to your mind? I see a richly-bearded geezer in a tricorne hat…
The manager, not the man
For a quarter of a century Sir Alex Ferguson bestrode football’s narrow world like a colossus. Like his predecessor knight-manager,…
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…
