Books
How do we greet one another today?
Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right
Piracy pays: how history’s greatest buccaneer got off scot-free
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
The greatest ‘if only’ of modern history... that the Weimar Republic had succeeded
Has it ever occurred to you that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 might have won us the war? Until…
Good biographers make the best companions
Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…
Keeping poker-faced is no use – it’s the hands that give the game away
This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…
A panoramic novel of modern Britain: The Blind Light, by Stuart Evers, reviewed
A decade ago — eheu fugaces labuntur anni — Stuart Evers’s debut story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking, was one…
From bashful teenager to supermodel: Susanna Moore’s fairytale memoir
There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…
Chilli con carnage: the red hot pepper and communism
These days it is as hard to imagine Sichuanese food without chillies as it is to imagine Italian food without…
Splashing the cash at VIP nightclubs is now the favourite recreation of the rich
The spectacular extravagance of the VIP nightclub ‘experience’ could be the last bonfire of the vanities, says Lynn Barber
Why Niki Lauda was considered the bravest man in sport
Formula One motor racing is the perennial, worldwide contest that most reliably gratifies hero-worshipping, power-worshipping, money-worshipping, technology-worshipping ghouls, and some…
Young female Irish writers are setting a new trend in fiction
Publishers everywhere are looking for the new Sally Rooney, which is odd since as far as I know the old…
A Chaucerian tale: Pilgrims, by Matthew Kneale, reviewed
Matthew Kneale is much drawn to people of the past. In his award-winning English Passengers, he captured the sensibilities of…
Children should get out more — even if it’s for hide and seek in the park
We live in an urban world. It’s a statistical fact. The great outdoors for most of us is a thing…
A choice of classic crime fiction
A guide to reading in lockdown. My involvement with crime and mystery fiction started when I was four. The first…
The hazards of attending a queen
When Queen Alexandra chose her ladies in waiting she prudently surrounded herself with elderly and plainish ones, who did not…
Ireland through the eyes of a brilliant teenage naturalist
Dara McAnulty is a teenage naturalist from Northern Ireland. He has autism; so do his brother, sister and mother —…
The cure becomes the problem: The Seduction, by Joanna Briscoe, reviewed
Beth, the protagonist of Joanna Briscoe’s The Seduction, reminded me of Clare in Tessa Hadley’s debut, Accidents in the Home.…
Science and philanthropy meet in the Royal Society of Arts
What does Jony Ive, the designer of Apple’s iPhone, have in common with Peter Perez Burdett, the first Englishman to…
Northern noir: The Mating Habits of Stags, by Ray Robinson, reviewed
It is winter in north Yorkshire. On the brink of New Year, Jake, a laconic, isolated former farmhand in his…
Tree-ring analysis has solved many historical mysteries
History is only as good as its sources. It is limited largely to what has survived of written records, and…
Our recent stockpiling is nothing to what ‘preppers’ lay in store
This book could not have been published at a better time — nor, in a way, at a worse time.…
The fitness fetish: The Motion of the Body Through Space, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
In her 2010 novel So Much for That, Lionel Shriver examined the American healthcare system with a spiky sensitivity. Big…
The end of capitalism has been just around the corner for centuries
These days the world seems to end with staggering regularity. From the financial crisis to Brexit to Trump to a…
The history of Thebes is as mysterious as its Sphinx
The Spartans were not the only Greeks to die at Thermopylae. On the fateful final morning of the battle, when…
The many rival identities of Charles Dickens
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst explores the many rival identities of Charles Dickens
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