Books

Has the term ‘racist’ become devalued through overuse?

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Quite possibly. But racism remains all too real today – even though half the British population deny it exists

Rumpelstiltskin retold: Alive in the Merciful Country, by A.L. Kennedy, reviewed

4 January 2025 9:00 am

A group of idealistic activists is betrayed by a charismatic newcomer who dazzles with skill and charm – and gets away with murder. Repeatedly

‘You can really sing!’ – Sonny discovers the teenage Cher

4 January 2025 9:00 am

The moment Sonny heard the voice of the girl he employed as a cleaner, both their fortunes changed – and two years later the couple would be greeted by 5,000 screaming fans in New York

‘The wickedest man in Europe’ was just an intellectual provocateur

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Sir Bernard Mandeville certainly revelled in mischief-making; but his one simple idea – that human beings are animals – seems unremarkable today

The intensity of female friendship explored

4 January 2025 9:00 am

Rachel Cooke’s spry anthology includes fiction, poetry, memoir, speeches, obituaries, letters and even comics – The Four Marys from Bunty

Emilie du Châtelet – a lone voice among Enlightenment thinkers

4 January 2025 9:00 am

The brilliant physicist’s warning to her contemporaries not to carry respect for great men to the point of idolatry fell on deaf ears

The good, the bad, & the just plain wrong

14 December 2024 9:00 am

My pick of the Aussie books of 2024

Spot the Nobel Laureate in Literature

14 December 2024 9:00 am

How many can you spot? For answers, click here Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.

When will Ronald Reagan get the recognition he deserves?

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Max Boot’s contention that Reagan was a lightweight pragmatist who played little part in reviving America or winning the Cold War is absurdly revisionist

Thomas Kyd may have delighted Elizabethan audiences, but he still wasn’t a patch on Shakespeare

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Brian Vickers aims to ‘restore’ Kyd to greatness – but claiming too much on too little evidence does the playwright no favours

The rotten core of Credit Suisse

14 December 2024 9:00 am

For scandal, sleaze, hubris and treachery, no financial institution has been a serial offender like the disgraced Swiss bank. Little wonder it was dubbed Credit Swizz or Debit Suisse

Why does James Baldwin matter so much now?

14 December 2024 9:00 am

The rise of Queer Studies and Black Lives Matter has led to renewed interest in Baldwin – who was exasperated in life with being categorised by colour or as ‘gay’

Modern-day ghosts: Haunted Tales, by Adam Macqueen, reviewed

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Dark, unsettling stories set mostly in the world of social media and panic rooms are, strikingly, as much about love as death – and how love is stronger

Nostalgia for the bustling high street is misplaced

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Annie Gray is refreshingly unsentimental about the days when cooking for the family involved time-consuming visits to the butcher, the greengrocer and baker

‘Carried away by those Russians’ – the dreadful fate of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters

14 December 2024 9:00 am

The queen’s repeated warnings to Alix and Ella of the danger of marrying Russians were ignored, and both Princesses of Hesse would die appalling deaths at the hands of revolutionaries

For God or Allah: the savage wars between Christians and Muslims over the ages

14 December 2024 9:00 am

It’s impossible to say which side excelled in imaginative barbarism in this blood-soaked history spanning 1,300 years

The must-have novelties nobody needed

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Richard Loncraine and Peter Broxton, designers of surreal ‘executive toys’ in the 1960s, reveal the frailty and vanity of a time when ‘poets, pop stars and miniskirts were everywhere’

Why 4,000 pages of T.S. Eliot’s literary criticism is not enough

14 December 2024 9:00 am

Faber’s text-only, strictly chronological four-volume edition of the prose is fatally purist – though admittedly cheaper than the eight-volume Johns Hopkins version

Celebrating Miss Marple, expert on the wickedness of village life

14 December 2024 9:00 am

The elderly spinster with a fine sense of evil was a creation Agatha Christie never tired of – unlike the ‘tiresome, egocentric’ Hercule Poirot

The mythic mishmash of Wagner’s Ring

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Its towering themes of gods, giants, dragons and magic were not purely Germanic in origin, whatever fever-dream they later conjured in Hitler’s brain

Out of this world: The Suicides, by Antonio di Benedetto, reviewed

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Written as Argentina descended into the Dirty War, this eerie fable about a reporter investigating a spate a suicides is thrillingly original

Four legs good, two legs bad – the philosophy of Gerald Durrell

7 December 2024 9:00 am

From a young man determined to protect the world’s vulnerable species, Durrell became in middle age someone who loathed the species of which he was a member

Was Graham Brady really the awesome power-broker he imagines?

7 December 2024 9:00 am

His kiss-and-tell memoir implies that the past five Tory prime ministers all feared him. But the longtime Chair of the 1922 Committee was in reality no ‘kingmaker’

‘Teaching someone to draw is teaching them to look’: the year’s best art books

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Subjects range from a Paleolithic bone carving to Banksy’s graffiti, via colour concepts, romanticism, tattoos and mirror painting

A rare combination of humour and pathos: the sublimely talented Neil Innes

7 December 2024 9:00 am

The musician and parodist, whose mantra was ‘not to say no when there’s a way to say yes’, had a gift for creating happiness in private as well as public, as his widow poignantly attests