Books

The night has a thousand eyes

24 May 2025 9:00 am

Dan Richards explores the lives of the nurses, train drivers, rescue crews and factory workers who are up and about while the rest of us are sleeping

The childhood terrors of Judith Hermann

24 May 2025 9:00 am

The German writer recalls her grandmother’s collection of voodoo dolls and her father’s surreal invention of a stunted lodger living in the suspended ceiling

Round the world in a vast, unlovely barge

24 May 2025 9:00 am

How does the metamorphosis of lumbering, engineless vessel – from freight container to troop-carrier to prison, hostel and rusting hulk – reflect today’s economic climate?

Amid the alien corn: Beautyland, by Marie-Helene Bertino

24 May 2025 9:00 am

Adina – born prematurely in Pennsylvania as Voyager 1 probe is launched – believes she’s an extraterrestrial sent from Planet Cricket Rice to report on human life

A psychopath on the loose: Never Flinch, by Stephen King, reviewed

24 May 2025 9:00 am

A serial killer vows retribution for the death of a friend framed for child pornography offences in King’s latest cliffhanger

My obsession with ageing rock stars – by Kate Mossman

24 May 2025 9:00 am

The music journalist describes a career spent interviewing the likes of Sting, Tom Jones, Brian May and Roger Taylor – each time feeling ‘something inside me ignite’

The problem with Pascal’s wager

17 May 2025 9:00 am

Graham Tomlin focuses on the Catholic philosopher’s search for intellectual certainty, but the cosmic gamble’s serious flaws don’t get the attention they deserve

Richard Ellmann: the man and his masks

17 May 2025 9:00 am

James Joyce’s celebrated biographer seemed a mild man to fellow academics – but his ambition and steely self-belief made him a callous husband and father

Consorting with the enemy: The Propagandist, by Cécile Desprairies, reviewed

17 May 2025 9:00 am

The debut novel by a historian of the Vichy regime is a personal J’Accuse, indicting the collaborators in her family for their part in France’s collapse in the second world war

Private battles: Twelve Post-War Tales, by Graham Swift, reviewed

17 May 2025 9:00 am

The latest short stories focus on everyday traumas: ageing, PTSD in a former soldier, and the loss of a parent, spouse or grandchild

A David Bowie devotee with the air of Adrian Mole

17 May 2025 9:00 am

Plodding through suburbia in Bowie’s footsteps, Peter Carpenter might be Sue Townsend’s hero incarnate – and there’s even an omnipresent friend called Nigel

From the early 1930s we knew what Hitler’s intentions were – so why were we so ill-prepared?

17 May 2025 9:00 am

Intelligence provided by William de Ropp made the situation painfully clear, but the British political establishment, determined on peace, wilfully ignored the warnings

Driven to extremes: The Rest of Our Lives, by Ben Markovits, reviewed

17 May 2025 9:00 am

Haunted by his wife’s affair, a middle-aged professor leaves his home and job to take a road trip across America. But will his act of emancipation bring him peace?

The mixed messages of today’s architecture – retro utopias or dizzy towers?

17 May 2025 9:00 am

The way out of the muddle, says Owen Hopkins, is ‘post-architecture’ – tied to the earth and purged of vanity – which can be achieved by a close study of 21 remarkable buildings

Keith McNally: ‘Still craving the success I pretend to despise’

17 May 2025 9:00 am

In a self-lacerating memoir, the restaurateur describes his many regrets, dislikes and feuds with celebrities, his longing for recognition and his love of family and friends

Why shamanism shouldn’t be dismissed as superstitious savagery

17 May 2025 9:00 am

Our need for belief in the supernatural gave rise to a demand for ‘mystical intermediaries’, or shamans, forging man’s earliest religion from which all others developed, argues Manvir Singh

It’s trust in English kindness that keeps the migrants coming

10 May 2025 9:00 am

More than 12 million Brits engage in some form of voluntary work, many of whom have dropped everything to help those arriving in small boats

Studying Dickens at university was once considered demeaning. Now it’s too demanding

10 May 2025 9:00 am

Accessible, ‘relevant’ short stories are increasingly replacing the classics, as the monuments of Victorian literature defeat today’s undergraduates

The grooming of teenaged Linn Ullmann

10 May 2025 9:00 am

Ignoring her mother Liv Ullmann’s advice, 16-year-old Linn accepted the offer of a photo shoot in Paris in 1983 – and has been haunted by the experience ever since

It’s a wonder that the Parthenon remains standing at all

10 May 2025 9:00 am

From a temple to Athena, it became a Byzantine, then Latin, church, a mosque, a powder magazine and finally a ruin. Lord Elgin’s vandalism was hardly anything new

News from a small island: Theft, by Abdulrazak Gurnah, reviewed

10 May 2025 9:00 am

Decades of change follow the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar, with boutique hotels multiplying in Stone Town’s haunted streets. But is a whole way of life being threatened?

Who’s the muse? In a Deep Blue Hour, by Peter Stamm, reviewed

10 May 2025 9:00 am

A documentary film-maker grows obsessed by a recurring character in a celebrated series of novels – much to their author’s mounting displeasure

What sea slugs can teach us about organ transplants

10 May 2025 9:00 am

The ability of species of nudibranch to incorporate the cells of completely separate species could have profound implications for humanity, says Drew Harvell

When ordinary men did extraordinary things – D-Day revisited

10 May 2025 9:00 am

The transporting of 150,000 troops across the Channel in total secrecy and the feats they did that day is a story we never tire of – and Max Hastings tells it exceedingly well

A cremation caper: Stealing Dad, by Sofka Zinovieff, reviewed

10 May 2025 9:00 am

Part grief-memoir, part macabre escapade, Zinovieff’s latest book is inspired by her own father’s bizarre strictures regarding his funeral