Books
An alternative way of living
It’s been a century since the heyday of the Bloomsbury group, and now Nino Strachey, a descendant of one of…
Onwards and upwards
The great age of the Scottish autodidact must have ended a century ago, but it had a prodigious impact while…
Time is running out
This is not a book about tennis. Roger Federer appears early on, trailed by the obligatory question ‘When will he…
Women behaving badly
Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women established her as a narrator of female desire in all its complexity. Her study of three…
Art for the people
When I mentioned the subject of this book to someone reasonably well-informed about 20th-century British art, the response was: ‘Isn’t…
From the mouse to the elephant
Humans are so comfortable with their self-declared dominance over the rest of life, appointing themselves titular head of an entire…
Will the world forsake him?
Cracks are beginning to appear in T.S. Eliot’s once unassailable reputation, says Philip Hensher
Basketball talk
On the cover of The Sidekick, just below a broken basketball hoop, a quote from Jonathan Lethem suggests Benjamin Markovits…
Married to the Blond Beast
There have been many biographies of Reinhard Heydrich, the cold, cynical head of the SS in the Third Reich, but…
Prophesying doom
In the wake of catastrophe, however random or unpredictable, one of the first things people can be relied upon to…
Too close to home
Julie Myerson has, somewhat confusingly, written a novel called Nonfiction. The confusion of course is the point, because this is…
The keys to success
Every Good Boy Does Fine – a banal phrase that also just happens to be the key to limitless wonder.…
Be careful what you wish for
The problem for feminism is men. Not, specifically, in the sense that men are the source of women’s problems, although…
A proud, independent spirit
‘Deplorable,’ wrote the historian Denis Sinor in 1958 about the state of Hungarian historiography in English. ‘Not only are the…
Hockey sticks to diplomacy
If you want an inside view on the Trump White House, there could hardly be a better read than Joe…
Laughing in the face of adversity
Writing from a child’s point of view is a daredevil act that Miriam Toews raises the stakes on in her…
Brother against brother
‘The Wars of the Three Kingdoms’ is the best description of the devastating conflict that erupted in England, Ireland and…
The real Norfolk
D.J. Taylor is a Norfolk native who, un-usually, has stayed put. These stories, written during the pandemic, are all set…
Duty vs pleasure
In this delightful sequel to her semi-autobiographical novel The Idiot (2017), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Elif…
Serious entertainment
What a weird lot crime writers are. I don’t come to this conclusion lightly, since I’m a crime writer myself,…
Rock till you drop
What do the following individuals have in common: a political activist from Suffolk; a chartered psychologist from Oxfordshire, who enjoys…
Cleopatra on the warpath
These Bodies of Water begins dramatically (as befits a book derived from Sabrina Mahfouz’s Royal Court show A History of…
Ballet’s lonely pioneer
Bronislava Nijinska was constantly undermined in her lifetime – most cruelly by her brother, says Sarah Crompton
No time-wasters, please
Apparently Anna Wintour wants to be seen as human, and Amy Odell’s biography goes some way to helping her achieve…
When she was good…
In June 1957, Robert Lowell attended a poetry reading by E.E. Cummings. Sitting dutifully and deferentially alongside him were Allen…
