Books
The ghost of his father haunts Winston Churchill
In a whimsical piece written by Churchill in 1947, Lord Randolph’s ethereal figure appears in the studio at Chartwell – to muse on the possibility of a political career for his son
A painful homecoming: The Visitor, by Maeve Brennan, reviewed
Returning to the family house in Dublin after the death of her mother in Paris, 22-year-old Anastasia expects a warm welcome – only to be steadily spurned by her embittered grandmother
This other Eden: Adam and Eve in Paradise, by Eça de Queirós, reviewed
Published in 1897, Queiros’s novella revisits Christianity’s first man and woman, departing from the Creation story in ways both playful and profound
We are all people of faith, whether we realise it or not
Reason, narrowly framed, will never reveal the world to us. A better path involves reason harnessed to our ethical and aesthetic impulses, argues Alister McGrath
Red-letter days for Gilbert & George
After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes
The beauty and tedium of the works of Adalbert Stifter
The 19th-century Austrian was an astonishingly pure stylist, as W.G. Sebald acknowledges – but it takes real dedication to craft to write such boring novels
The awful calamity of Stalin being a music lover
The dictator obsessed over new recordings and was a frequent visitor to the Bolshoi; but he treated even the greatest musicians arbitrarily, consigning many to the Gulag for no reason
The next best thing to visiting a really clever friend in New York
Vivian Gornick’s memoir of life in the city in the 1960s and 1970s is rich in anecdote and dialogues with waspish friends and neighbours
Time is running out to tackle the dangers posed by AI
While we can all appreciate the benefits of AI, it is developing faster than anyone imagined, with no consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk
The golden days of Greenwich Village
David Browne celebrates the vitality of the Village in its 1960s heyday, when clubs were subterranean crucibles where jazz, folk, blues and poetry swirled in a potent brew
The horror of Hungary in the second world war
Having suffered heavy casualties fighting the Soviets as part of the Axis alliance, the country was then occupied by the Nazis, which led to wholesale carnage during the siege of Budapest in 1945
A mole in the CIA: The Seventh Floor, by David McCloskey, reviewed
McCloskey’s latest thriller is well written and tautly paced, but we feel so little connection with the suspect agents that the eventual unmasking of the mole is an anticlimax
Bad vibrations: Lazarus Man, by Richard Price, reviewed
Shudderings from a subway extension in Harlem causes a tenement building to collapse, killing six people and leading to many missing in this cinematic thriller
Alexander Pushkin – Russia’s greatest letter-writer
Intimate, earthy and uninhibited, Pushkin’s letters, collected together, read like a novel and give an encyclopaedic view of 19th-century Russian life
The unfulfilled life: Ask Me Again, by Clare Sestanovich, reviewed
Our aimless young heroine struggles to find herself in New York, Washington and Los Angeles – but even the novel’s inconclusiveness is compelling
Norman Lewis – a restless adventurer with a passion for broken-down places
John Hatt’s latest selection of the travel writer’s journalism includes articles on Castro’s Havana, the Yemen of the Imams, Batista’s Cuba, French Indo-China and Neapolitan men of honour
Outlandish epic: Lies and Sorcery, by Elsa Morante, reviewed
Spanning three generations of Sicilian women, this family saga of honour, deception and class politics is also a study in morality and the petty ways in which it is eroded
Rebellion and repression: Oromay, by Baalu Girma, reviewed
Girma’s semi-autobiographical thriller follows the efforts of the Marxist Mengistu to crush secessionist Eritrea in the bloody aftermath of Haile Selassie’s downfall
A winter’s tale: Brightly Shining, by Ingvild Rishoi, reviewed
In a poignant story reminiscent of ‘The Little Match Girl’, two Norwegian children try to dodge social services by selling wreaths and Christmas trees when their father fails to provide for them
The Vikings never really went away
The Norsemen were settlers as well as raiders, and by the 860s had built up a ‘great heathen army’ to conquer and colonise much of Britain and the Continent
Versailles’s role as a palace of science
The vast seat of Bourbon power also doubled as a laboratory for experiments in astronomy, hydraulics, engineering, ballooning, medicine, mathematics and cartography
The joy of discussing life’s great questions with a philosopher friend
A higher form of love than romance or conjugal felicity was what Socrates offered in his dialogues, says Agnes Callard
Once upon a time in Germany: the Grimms’ legacy of revenge and gory redemption
The Household Tales only attained their standing after the brothers’ death, with the unification of Germany and the decades of nationalism that led to catastrophe
Menacing masterpieces: Voices of the Fallen Heroes and Other Stories, by Yukio Mishima
Of the collection’s 14 mesmerising tales, two in particular stand out: a hallucination of nuclear apocalypse and a requiem for Japan’s war dead
Bad air days: Savage Theories, by Pola Oloixarac, reviewed
University students immersed in drug-and-group-sex and online gaming reveal the dark side of Buenos Aires
