Books
The moving picture of life
Almost 30 years after his death, François Truffaut remains a vital presence in the cinema. Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson…
Recent crime fiction
Denise Mina’s 11th crime novel, The Red Road (Orion, £12.99), is one of her best, which is saying a good…
Fighting communism single-handed
Had Onan not spilled his seed upon the ground, he might have invented invisible ink. The possibility had not occurred…
Trying to keep afloat
The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…
Trying to keep afloat
The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…
Trying to keep afloat
The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…
Books and Arts
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The plight of the predestined
There could be no backsliding while preparing the next plot, murder or battle in the French Wars of Religion, says Hywel Williams
The inside story
Many books have been written about the corruption, venality and incestuousness that characterise Washington DC, but none has been as…
A legend in his own time
The last time David Peace wrote a novel about football he got his publishers sued for libel, which may help…
What we really really didn’t want
The title of Alwyn W. Turner’s book could deter readers. Even the Hollywood film The Secret Lives of Dentists promised…
Beyond this, nothing
This may sound a little orientalist, but Tangier has some claim to being the most foreign city in the world.…
Kill or cure
Charles Cullen, an American nurse, murdered several hundred patients by the administration in overdose of restricted drugs. Hospitals should be…
Ruthless Roundheads
Adrian Tinniswood, so gifted and spirited a communicator of serious history to a wide readership, here brings a number of…
Last man standing
Like Mel Brooks’s character the Two Thousand-Year-Old Man, Peter Lewis has met everyone of consequence. Though he doesn’t mention being…
A guide to the Man Booker longlist
The Man Booker prize has strong years and weak years. There have been ones when the judges have succeeded in…
The Email About Writing the Poem
I’ve been occupying myself trying to write a long-ish poem. It’s an odd sensation writing a poem. You’re trying to…
Fairfax under fire
What a spectacle. A Fairfax journalist flanked by a beaming James Packer, making no secret of his loathing for her…
A pioneer at heart
Richard Davenport-Hines on the tomboy from Red Cloud whose evocation of the vast, unforgiving landscape of the prairies is unrivalled
Redemption with laughs
Harry Christmas, the central character of this bitterly funny debut novel, is a middle- aged, overweight alcoholic, with no friends…
Swan song from Yerevan
Vasily Grossman, a Ukranian-born Jew, was a war correspondent for the Soviet army newspaper Red Star. His dispatches from the…
Epic journeys
Consider for a moment the plight of the willow warbler. Russian birds of this species fly between eastern Siberia and…
Life in the Augean stables
What, really, is a literary education for? What’s the point of it? How, precisely, does it help when you’re another…
Decorous Confessions
Unexpectedly, he made a sober success with his self-published book of decorous confessions. It eschewed turmoil in the bedchamber and…
Escape through the locks
The title, the subtitle, the author’s plain name, even the jacket’s photograph of a laughing old lady in sunglasses: none…
