How not to train a truffle dog
For the first time in decades, King Charles has a new pet dog, a lagotto Romagnolo called Snuff. Queen Camilla…
Del Toro’s Frankenstein offers nothing new
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein stars Oscar Isaac (Baron Victor Frankenstein) and Jacob Elordi (‘the creature’) and retells the basics of…
We have to stop looking away
I learnt not to intervene on a late summer’s afternoon nine years ago. My son was still a baby and…
Did our B&B guests smell a rat?
As I was showing a couple from Lincolnshire to their room, I smelt a rat. I don’t mean metaphorically, about…
The furious tug of war between 18th-century Whigs and Tories
George Owers evokes the seismic cultural divisions between the parties – with different coffee houses attended, wines drunk, doctors consulted and fashions preferred
My unofficial music teacher
In the early 1970s my father moved offices and I was plucked out of my cosy prep school in Surrey…
The making of William Golding as a writer
Letters between Golding and Faber’s Charles Monteith reveal just how much the author owed to his editor – not least in the choice of book titles
New York is not the city that Mamdani pretends it is
There is an unhappy history of left-wing Britons getting involved in US elections. Back in 2004, the Guardian organised a letter-writing campaign,…
The Two Roberts drank, danced, fought – but how good was their art?
The Two Roberts, Robert MacBryde (1913-66) and Robert Colquhoun (1914-62), are figures of a lost British bohemia. Both born in…
The reluctant spy: The Predicament, by William Boyd, reviewed
Sucked further into the quicksand of 1960s espionage, Gabriel Dax is sent to Guatemala, and then on to West Berlin, where he uncovers a plot to assassinate President Kennedy
Lice combs, vaginal syringes and cesspits: at home in 17th century Holland
The room is dark, the lighting deliberately low. At its centre stands a solitary object: a yellow and green earthenware…
A feast for quiz-lovers: Christmas gift books
Delightful oddities include: foreign equivalents of ‘Joe Bloggs’; alternatives to the word ‘Hello’; and El Greco’s offer to repaint the Sistine Chapel
