Books
The people’s Prince: even as a teenager the musician charmed everyone he met
Many pop stars are easy to imagine as children, as it’s a profession that doesn’t really reward growing up. Elton…
The first Puritans weren’t so much killjoys as ardent believers in honest living
‘Puritan’ is a term of abuse, and we tend to use it to refer to such figures as the nightmarishly…
Lydia Davis, like an inspirational teacher, tempts her readers into more reading
A good indicator of just how interesting and alluring Lydia Davis’s Essays proved might be my recent credit card statement.…
The Great War was enough to make grown men weep
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo it took a mere six weeks for the diplomats of Europe’s…
James Baldwin’s radicalism was part Marxist, part Christian
Great biographies try to answer questions about the complicated relationship between their subjects’ inner life and outer workings. How did…
When Cartier was the girls’ best friend
The word ‘jewel’ makes the heart beat a little faster. Great jewels have always epitomised beauty, love — illicit or…
The old monster Elton John appears charmingly self-deprecating
I don’t care for Elton John. A cross between Violet Elizabeth Bott and Princess Margaret, his temper tantrums are legendary,…
The exotic Silk Road is now a highway to hell
This engaging book describes the Norwegian author’s travels round the five Central Asian Stans — a region where toponyms still…
Poland was no walkover for the Reich
‘The victor will never be asked if he told the truth,’ Hitler remarked on the eve of invading Poland in…
Could Leslie Jamison please stop sitting on the fence?
Leslie Jamison is creating quite a stir in America. Her first collection of essays, The Empathy Exams, went straight to…
It’s yellow, not green, that’s the colour of jealousy
Making attributions to Leonardo da Vinci, the great art historian Adolfo Venturi once remarked, is like ‘picking up a red-hot…
What do we really mean by the ‘language’ of animals?
The reality of animal communication (or, more precisely, our belief in that reality) is a fact underwritten not by science…
Nostalgia for old Ceylon: lush foliage and tender feelings from Romesh Gunesekera
Empires are born to die; that’s one source of their strange allure. An untenable form of society judders, in technicolor…
The carnage inside Charlie Hebdo: an eyewitness’s account of the attack
It is almost five years since two trained jihadists went into the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and killed…
Angels and daemons: Children’s books for Christmas
Sometimes I have to admit the reason I read children’s books with pleasure is that I’m essentially puerile —and look,…
Capturing the mood of the English landscape: the genius of John Nash
‘If I wanted to make a foreigner understand the mood of a typical English landscape,’ the art critic Eric Newton…
Make it an applefest this Christmas — the best of the year’s cookbooks
If it were not for a banker with a hangover, we would not have Eggs Benedict. Or so one of…
Books of the year – part two
Richard Ingrams A book that gave me great enjoyment (for all the wrong reasons) was Harvest Bells: New and Uncollected…
Yalta was a carve-up — and the Poles are understandably still bitter about it
‘The strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.’ Thucydides’ principle expresses an uncomfortable truth. The eight-day…
Eleanor of Aquitaine is still as elusive as quicksilver
Eleanor of Aquitaine is the most famous woman of the Middle Ages: queen of France and England, crusader, mother of…
Ben Lerner’s much hyped latest novel reads like an audit of contemporary grievances
Things keep recurring in the novels of Ben Lerner — snatches of conversation, lines of poetry, Lerner himself. But in…
Children’s questions about death are consistently good fun
What strikes me most about the Christmas gift-book industry — for industry it surely is, as I can confirm, having…
Friends forever: the inside story of the American sitcom classic
Here is a test to tell you whether you will like this book or not: when I write ‘So, no…
Tips for Christmas tipples
It’s telling that perhaps the best wine book of last year, Amber Revolution by Simon Woolf, was self-published, though you’d…
Less radical, less rich: Elizabeth Strout’s Olive, Again is a disappointment
Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-prize winning Olive Kitteridge (2008) is the novel I recommend to friends who don’t read much. Talk about…
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