Books
The magnificence of Elizabethan portraiture
Roy Strong first encountered the portraiture of Elizabeth I and her court while a schoolboy in post-war Edmonton. In the…
Vengeful pygmies
It says almost everything that needs to be said about Niki Savva’s latest book that its original title was Highway…
The glory and the misery of Louis XIV’s France
I was flicking through an old copy of The Spectator the other day, one of the issues containing contributors’ ‘Christmas…
The latest first novels are full of romantic misadventure
Andrew Ridker’s The Altruists (Viking, £20) is a Jewish family saga of academic parents and grown-up offspring. From this rather…
Savagery in the Cape Colony: Red Dog, by Willem Anker, reviewed
Red Dog is an ambitious hybrid of a book. It was published in South Africa to wide acclaim in 2014…
Feasts, flowers and plein-air painting at Benton End
Cedric Morris is often referred to as an artist-plantsman, and while as a breeder of plants, most particularly of irises,…
The bias against digital music is more emotional than scientific
It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…
Haunting short stories of fear and frustration
In Nicole Flattery’s Show Them a Good Time (Bloomsbury, £14.99), her female protagonists grapple with abusive relationships, degree courses, difficult…
Beauty on the beach: Isolde, by Irina Odoevtseva, reviewed
France was to blame. Yes, France was most definitely to blame. He was never like this at home. So thinks…
From pets to pests: cats, rabbits and now raccoons
I was shocked some years ago to discover, as I scratched bites on my ankles on holiday on Maui, that…
Harper Lee’s battle wasn’t with writer’s block but the whisky bottle
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the most beloved American novels of all time. Famously, Lee never…
A novel about depression that doesn’t depress: Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, reviewed
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has achieved that rare feat, in her second novel Starling Days, of writing a convincing novel about…
Solving the mystery of my mother’s kidnap
At first glance, Laura Cumming’s memoir On Chapel Sands begins with what appears to be a happy ending. On an…
Creatures of the night: why do we find them irresistible?
When it was recently announced that Robert Pattinson, who played the vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films, had secured…
Desperate souls: Travellers, by Helon Habila, reviewed
Death by water haunts the stories of Africans in Europe that flow through this fourth novel by Helon Habila. From…
A drag army in waiting: This Brutal House, by Niven Govinden, reviewed
Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set in the demi-monde of the New York vogue ball. This is an organised,…
For a passionate ecologist, Barry Lopez burns a lot of oil
It is more than a generation since the appearance of Barry Lopez’s classic Arctic Dreams. That book’s effortless integration of…
From bibliomania to kleptomania: the serious crimes of book lovers
In the spring of 1998, Rolling Stones fans in Germany were disappointed to hear that the band had been forced…
The Kan-do spirit: Under Red Skies, by Karoline Kan, reviewed
The defining feature of Chinese millennials is not Instagram, avocado on toast or propertylessness. Born in the early years of…
Fluttering to extinction: the tragedy of Britain’s butterflies
In 1979, despite the best efforts of scientists for more than a century, a butterfly called the British Large Blue…
Getting to grips with rocket science
Now that we are stupidly rendering Earth almost entirely uninhabitable by many species including our own (through overcrowding, failing political…
The free-spirited sisters who galvanised the Bloomsbury Group
It was high time we had a proper look at the four beautiful, original Olivier sisters. Hitherto, with one exception,…
History is made from ideas — but are ideas becoming history?
Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if…
Polari, the secret gay argot, is making a surprising comeback
Imagine you’re a gay man living in the year 1950. Not unnaturally, you would like to meet another gay man.…
An education in love: City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert, reviewed
One of the chief regrets of book-loving women of my age — and a surprising number of men — is…
