Letters
Left-behind boys Sir: Christopher Snowdon’s perceptive and informative article (‘The lost boys’, 18 July) reflects perfectly my own experiences in…
There will be blood
Two films about young women this week, one at the cinema, if you dare, and one to stream, if you…
Thrills and spills
Before reading this book, the only thing I knew about Action Park was that it had lent its name to…
Juggling a hot potato
Melancholy pervades this novel: a sense of glasses considerably more than half empty, with the levels sinking fast. This is…
No love lost
A book about breaking confidences, not to mention friendships, rather begs the same in return. Reading Anne Applebaum’s brief memoir…
The EU’s new fault lines
Anyone who imagined that the departure of Britain would make for more harmonious EU summits in future will have been…
How do they do it?
Wendy Williams is an enthusiast, and enthusiasm is infectious. Lepidoptery is for her a new fascination, and it shows. On…
The strain of keeping mum
Are all children of famous parents told they must have a book in them? Since Allegra Huston’s wonderful memoir Love…
Sad and beautiful
Short story writers often find it irksome to be asked when the novel is coming out, as though their work…
On a Roman road
Should the PM move parliament to York? There is, of course, historical precedent for such a move, as he very…
In cold blood
Sharks may inspire fear and loathing, but we are the crueller predators, says Philip Hoare
The miniaturists
Model villages deliver a cheerful jolt to unexamined notions about our own place – and size – in the world, says Richard Bratby
A great public servant
This is a strange but valuable book. The author is a private equity magnate, whose fascination for Richard Burdon Haldane…
The art of plague
Travelling around Latin America three years ago, Stephen Chambers was attracted by pharmacy signs with pictograms advertising treatments to illiterate…
Open letters have become ransom notes
In the States, the ‘open letter’ is enjoying quite the formal renaissance. Curiously, recent examples of this newly popular epistolary…
The maestro
‘Had I not become a composer, I would have wanted to be a chess player, but a high-level one, someone…
Puzzle no. 614
White to play. Stefano Tatai–Spyridon Skembris, Budva Zonal 1981. Morricone’s teacher found a delightful conclusion to this attack. What was…
2467: Girl talk
Ten of the eleven unclued lights are of a kind and consist of singleton of two words, three pairs and…
Solution to 2464: TOPSY-TURVY
14 Down, TAPSALTEERIE, yields TAP 10, 15 and 35, three anagrams of SALTE (16, 32 and 36) and ERIE and…
The Turf
When I first began racing, few jump jockeys reckoned their careers would last beyond the ages of 32 or 33.…
Beauty, brutality, cricket and wine
In one respect, there has been a reassertion of normality, though this is nothing to do with the virus. Although…
