Hope in hell
Brought up by a tyrannical father in the postcard beauty of Montego Bay, this is a story of the author’s salvation through literature and the ferocity of maternal love
The sacred and profane
The great American writer is ill-served by this new biography – but luckily we still have her own writing to tell us who she truly was
Life class
Essays by Michael Peppiatt on the artists who quicken his heart, and encounters between Richard Cork and his favourites, including Jasper Johns, Henry Moore and Gilbert & George
Solo sisters
Gertrude Bell travelled extensively through Turkey before and after the first world war and the author plays dogged detective in her wake
Cut to the chase
It’s a brilliant page-turner device and works perfectly in stories set variously during the Algerian war of independence of the 1950s and Norfolk and London in the present day
Monkey business
A labyrinthine plot involving Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy clan form the basis of the latest in James Ellroy’s planned new ‘LA Quintet’
Hail dairy
A lifetime obsession with milk has resulted in 350 numbered, lightly edited and loosely connected remarks about milk, its colour, its smell and much else. Weird or what?
The pen and the plant
A sumptuous coffee-table book in which writers from Henry James to Frances Hodgson Burnett are briefly glimpsed while passing through the beautiful spaces that outlast them
By hook or by crook
Anne Henderson has produced a series of important books on the Menzies era. Her latest volume adds to this considerable…
To die for
Seventy-five years after its release, Powell and Pressburger’s dazzling, much-loved classic is more timely than ever, says Robin Ashenden
Wagner rewilded
In Northern Ireland Opera’s new Tosca, the curtain rises on a big concrete dish from which a pair of eyes…
Cheesy skit
The playwright Sam Holcroft likes to toy with dramatic conventions and to tease her audiences by withholding key information about…
Gods and monsters
The Lesson is a literary thriller that is occasionally heavy-handed but also menacingly entertaining, plus you get Richard E. Grant…
Country’s Van Halen
Pop critics routinely make the mistake of assuming the most important acts are the ones copied by the groups they…
Four-minute wonder
As the sun sets on another too-long summer festival season, let us take a moment to reflect on the Festival…
Forgotten lives
What happens when a museum outlives the worldview of its founder? For publicly funded museums with collections amassed during the…
O come let us adore him
Earlier this year, the Guardian took a break from arguing that ‘cancel culture’ is a right-wing myth to ask the…
Diamond-bright hoot
Oh to be in London with Barrie Kosky calling the shots in the first part of Wagner’s Ring Cycle Das…
High life
Gstaad The Speccie arrived just in time for me to read about the rudeness of one Lyndon Johnson, then vice-president,…
Real life
‘They’re going to have to stop cows,’ said my mother, looking doubtfully down at her plate as we tucked into…
The turf
Top owners are quitting horse racing because bookmakers nervous of a government and a Gambling Commission that know remarkably little…
Aussie life
There was a time when Australians prided themselves on their nose for bulls–t and for their willingness to call it…
Language
One of the powers of language is that it can give us the words (the tools) to think about our…
My brush with the Dangerous Dogs Act
Not everyone welcomed Rishi Sunak’s announcement last week that he would ban the XL Bully under the Dangerous Dogs Act.…
