Books
Things Fall Apart: Flesh, by David Szalay, reviewed
The fluctuating fortunes of an ambitious young Hungarian in London provide a gripping study of the choices that can make or break a life
The punishing life of a chief whip
Simon Hart describes his frustrations as he grapples with the rivalries and petty jealousies of colleagues lobbying for peerages and knighthoods as the Tory party implodes
A war of words: circulating forbidden literature behind the Iron Curtain
For decades, the CIA smuggled works by George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Czeslaw Milosz and many others into the Soviet bloc in a battle for hearts, minds and intellects
Wokeness under the Milky Way
Well before Trump’s re-election there were serious signs that woke and identity politics had peaked. In the 2023 blockbuster Harvard…
The world is now inexorably divided – and the West must fight to survive
One side wants to preserve core Judeo-Christian values; the other, driven by Islamist extremists, seeks to establish a dangerous new world of deracinated individuals, says Melanie Phillips
The weirdness of the pre-Beatles pop world
As his mental health declined, the record producer Joe Meek grew increasingly fascinated by the other-worldly, communing in graveyards with Buddy Holly and the Pharaoh Ramses the Great
How can a biography of Woody Allen be so unbearably dull?
Only after 300-plus pages of tedious filmography do we finally get to the rift with Mia Farrow and the family scandals that have dogged Allen ever since
Is Keir Starmer really Morgan McSweeney’s puppet?
Two lobby journalists portray the PM as the pawn of ‘the Irishman’ and as ‘a passenger on a train driven by others’ – but there is much more to Starmer than that
Hope springs eternal: The Café with No Name, by Robert Seethaler, reviewed
It’s Vienna, 1966, and a young labourer casts a speculative eye on a ramshackle café in the corner of the Karmelitermarkt, daring to restore it and improve his lot
The Assyrians were really not so different from us
Selena Wisnom shows us children toiling over their writing tablets, taking pride in schoolwork, and a heartbroken scribe finding consolation in literature after the death of his king in battle
Three’s a crowd: The City Changes its Face, by Eimear McBride, reviewed
Tension mounts between young Eily and her 40-year-old partner, Stephen, when Stephen’s daughter, Grace, appears, underlining the couple’s different ages and experiences
Any form of saturation bombing is a stain on humanity
Even before the dropping of ‘Little Boy’, the moral line was crossed with the destruction of almost every major Japanese city by incendiary and cluster bombs filled with napalm
The enlightened rule of the Empress Maria Theresa
‘She hates to see anyone put to death’, said one contemporary of the monarch who abolished torture and serfdom and pioneered the practice of open weekly audiences with the public
An artist in her own right: the genius of Elizabeth Siddal
Her imaginative, edgy sketches, though lacking technical expertise, often look beyond their time to a post-naturalist, symbolist era
Why were the security services so obsessed with the Marxist historian Christopher Hill?
MI5 and Special Branch intercepted Hill’s mail for decades, but the former Master of Balliol was an impartial teacher and certainly no Soviet agent
A gloom-laden tale: The Foot on the Crown, by Christopher Fowler reviewed
Returning to his roots in horror fiction, Fowler portrays Londinium as a dismal citadel, ruled by an enfeebled dynasty clinging to pointless rituals
A mild diversion for a wet afternoon: Three Days in June, by Anne Tyler, reviewed
Tyler is known for making the ordinary compelling, but this quiet tale of family relationships is subtle to the point of stupor
The sexual escapades of Edmund White sound like an improbably sordid Carry On film
The octogenarian writer seems unable to resist the burlesque, describing the most lurid encounters at an apparently droll remove
Modernisation has sent Russia spinning back to the Stone Age
Howard Amos portrays a once hopeful country now sweeping the past under the carpet as it alternates between pitying itself and pitting itself against the rest of the world
The gruesome fascination of female murderers
The 17th-century broadsheets revelled in describing the ‘lewd, abominable, corrupt’ nature of the ‘haggs’ and ‘she-devils’ indicted for homicide
The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell
Peter Conrad reminds us how the skilled stage performer, always yearning for enchantment, even introduced a few disguised magic tricks into his fiction
Reversing our economic decline is not easy, but it is simple
We are becoming poorer because we keep choosing to increase spending, taxes and debt, rather than incurring any short-term discomfort, argues Jon Moynihan
The pursuit of love letters: My Search for Warren Harding, by Robert Plunket, reviewed
Our magnificently monstrous anti-hero goes in quest of a cache of reputedly pornographic letters written by the former US president to his mistress
The magic of early radio days
Beaty Rubens takes us inside the British home 100 years ago as the glamorous new device becomes central to family life
The perils of poaching: Beartooth, by Callan Wink, reviewed
Two impoverished brothers from the Montana backcountry are tempted by the prospect of a daring heist in Yellowstone National Park
