Books
A troubled past
Andrew Miller specialises in characters who are lost, often struggling to deal with the burden of failure. They don’t come…
Back with a vengeance
If you were a teenager before 2005, one reminder of tuberculosis in British life is that small circular scar on…
Absurdities abound
For 20 years of my adult life, I moonlighted as a private tutor. After a full day in the office…
The caring doctress
Mary Seacole may not have qualified as a nurse in the modern sense, but British troops benefited greatly from her healing skills, says Andrew Lycett
Finding a voice
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
Atwood adrift
Margaret Atwood is among the major writers of English fiction of our time. This is a very boring way to…
The war in the shadows
When in 1941 Winston Churchill famously declared that the newly formed Special Operations Executive, set up to encourage resistance movements,…
Waters of forgetfulness
Julie Otsuka has good rhythm, sentences that move to a satisfying beat. Even as her tone shifts — from tender…
Truly magnificent
Suleiman I richly deserved his epithet, as this vivid account of his early years illustrates, says Jason Burke
God’s first draft
Readers familiar with Sheila Heti’s work, most notably How Should a Person Be? and Motherhood, in which she examines both…
Ignoble ambitions
This is the gripping story of the ever-fluctuating fortunes of three generations of the Dudley dynasty, servants to — and…
‘The Rothschilds of the East’
David Abulafia admires the shrewdness, generosity and panache of the Sassoons over many generations
From pirates to princes
The Normans had an astonishingly good run. Not only did they take over England in 1066, of course, but they…
Family misfortunes
The journalist and broadcaster Christina Patterson’s memoir begins promisingly. She has a talent for vivid visual description, not least: ‘We…
The four billion people question
Demographers are attached to their theories. The field’s most enduring is the ‘demographic transition’, whereby modernisation inexorably lowers a society’s…
Ways of escape
The first novel in more than 20 years from the essayist and cultural analyst Pankaj Mishra is as sharp, provocative…
True devotion
The 20th century was an amazing time for Russian pianists, and the worse things got, politically and militarily, the more…
Britain’s inglorious war
Despite prostrate Germany’s need for the return of its men, in Britain we didn’t release our prisoners of war until…
Force of nature
Philip Hensher describes how John Constable’s energy and imagination freed British art from the constraints of the past
Dreaming of escape
‘The drawer beside Roberta’s bed contained remnants of other people’s fun’: so begins ‘Mathematics’, one of 11 stories in this…
The paths that lead to truth
The dust jacket of The Matter With Things quotes a large statement from an Oxford professor: ‘This is one of…
The time of our lives
The long 1990s began with the Pixies album Surfer Rosa in 1989 and ended with the invasion of Iraq in…
A game of life and death
No one boards an overladen dinghy and sets out across a choppy sea without very good reason. Laden into migrant…
The past is ever present
‘One morning in late October 1988,’ begins TheLong Song of Tchaikovsky Street, ‘this dapper-looking guy from Leiden asked me if…
Hold on to your hats, boys
Stephen Daisley 5 March 2022 9:00 am
The greatest ever social media spat took place before the first tweet was sent, and was conducted via fax, which…