Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s transgender superman
Comics aren’t what they used to be. In 1976 I was 11 — the perfect target audience for probably the…
WH Smith, Britain’s worst high-street retailer, is ripe for disruption
I’m not in the least surprised to learn that WH Smith has been voted Britain’s worst high-street retailer in a…
Europe has a democracy problem
This week the EU revealed its true nature. Rather than hand power to a Eurosceptic, the Italian President Sergio Mattarella…
Trump has turned the Mueller investigation on its head
Donald Trump got bad reviews in the press — no surprise — when he announced that Rudy Giuliani, the former…
Twenty20 is making cricket great again
Blame it on a marketing survey. In 2001, the England and Wales Cricket Board commissioned the biggest piece of market…
Pope Francis raises the white flag
Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead…
The countryside’s immigration problem
One day there won’t be anyone to deliver the mail any more, and then what will the City types do?…
What on earth’s happened to Waitrose?
A few years ago, some friends came to stay with us on Exmoor. After they unfurled from their Volvo, they…
Only the south of France could silence Henry James
‘Saint-Tropez?’ said the French mother of a friend. ‘C’est un peu… “tacky”.’ She was distressed to think of our taking…
The Empty Quarter is a great refuge for lonely hearts
Here’s a treat for desert lovers. William Atkins, author of the widely admired book The Moor, has wisely exchanged the…
‘Steer clear of that cave boy, James Dean, and grease ball, Elvis Presley’
Lucky bastard. Such are the words that come constantly to mind while you’re reading Clancy Sigal’s two volumes of posthumously…
The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner reviewed
Asked how he achieves the distinctive realism for which his novels and screenplays are famous, Richard Price, that sharp chronicler…
You didn’t have to be mad to work for Tommy Nutter — but it helped
The tailor’s art is a triumph of mind over schmatte. Not just in the physical cutting and stitching, but in…
Never Anyone But You, by Rupert Thomson reviewed
In a 2013 interview with a Canadian newspaper, Rupert Thomson acknowledged the strange place he occupies in the literary world.…
The Female Persuasion, by Meg Wolitzer reviewed
It’s because it’s the land of the loner that the United States is so loved or loathed. Yet to me…
Sher genius: Antony Sher’s account of playing King Lear
Why are rehearsal diaries so compelling? One approaches them with cynicism and then ends up reading with racing heart through…
A review of debut novels — from Lisa Halliday, Margaret Wilkersen Sexton, Matthew Klam and Anbara Salam
Publication of a debut novel is an experience comparable with the birth of a first child. Literary gestation is normally…
I hate fishing — but was hooked by the story of the Yukon’s salmon
‘Help!’ I thought, when I read the Author’s Note. ‘It’s about salmon, and I hate fishing.’ But by the first…
How I exposed the truth about My Lai
The humble title of Seymour Hersh’s memoir is somewhat at odds with the tone of the book. He says the…
Speeding along the highway in America’s coolest cars
In 1973, four years before he disappeared down the Star Wars rabbit hole, George Lucas directed the film American Graffiti,…
Are European cities really so much better than our own?
Early on in his introduction of nearly 60 pages, Owen Hatherley writes: ‘I find the Britain promised by Brexiters quite…
Motherhood, by Sheila Heti reviewed
‘I don’t think this was something I ever felt’, Sheila Heti writes in Motherhood — ‘that my body, my life,…
The lovely curlew is wading into extinction
Mary Colwell, a producer at the BBC natural history unit, is on a mission: to save the British curlew from…
Missing, by Alison Moore reviewed
Whereas in an unabashed thriller, in the TV series The Missing, for example, the object of the exercise is well…
The buildings we knocked down in the name of ‘progress’
When the German novelist Sophie von La Roche visited Oxford Street in the 1780s she saw watchmakers and fan shops,…
