How to master the left-wing brag
No one likes a blatant boaster. So, as adults, we learn that if we want to boast, we must be…
Where exactly is the Middle East?
Less near Where exactly is the Middle East? – The term was first popularised in an article by Alfred Thayer…
Another interview goes awry…
Twenty minutes into what seemed a routine softball literary interview for Bloomberg TV in London last month, the conversation took…
Kim Jong-un’s sister or daughter? Only one can survive…
As a birthday treat, a good father might take his ten-year-old daughter to the ballet or a Disney movie. Three…
Letters: We interfere in the Middle East at our peril
The West’s track record Sir: I read with much sadness Matthew Parris’s reservations about western attempts at regime change in…
If oil prices stay high, you can bet on a recession
Shares everywhere dived for cover as missiles started flying. But one stock ahead of the pack, and responding to a…
I hate many pianists – but am I any better?
From time to time, I’ve given some famous pianists a bit of a kicking in the arts pages of this…
Fractured loyalties: The Tribe, by Michael Arditti, reviewed
A powerful Jewish family flee Salonika in 1912 – only to fall apart in France on the eve of the second world war
Blockchain fantasies: My Bags Are Big, by Tibor Fischer, reviewed
Everyone in Dubai’s confected utopia is reinventing themselves and failing miserably in this dark satire on greed, stupidity and regret
Nintendo and the plumber who conquered the world
Keza MacDonald describes how Mario, the company’s mascot, became not only an icon of Japanese culture but a global hero
Lloyd Blankfein – guiding light of Goldman Sachs
While considered a safe pair of hands during the financial crisis of 2007, Blankfein skirts around some of Goldman’s more controversial decisions at the time
The world destroyed by madness: Howl, by Howard Jacobson, reviewed
Apart from the atrocity of 7 October 2023 itself, it is the reaction of neighbours and even family that appals Jacobson’s protagonist in a novel that still manages to be darkly comic
Frederic Prokosch – the man who seemed to know everyone
A beguiling memoir boasts intimate encounters with many of the 20th century’s most celebrated writers – but should we believe a word of it?
Caught between Hitler and Bomber Command – the Berliners’ cruel predicament
Ordinary citizens faced two enemies in the war, and it as hard to know who was more dangerous – the Allies or their own deranged leaders
Life could be worse – you could be Jonathan Ross
‘Oh dear, you look like an old person,’ said Girl, greeting me in the interval of the Bach choir’s St…
I miss post-internet art
I got my first paid writing gig back in the early 2010s, for an online magazine fixated on the then-current…
Chasing happiness: The Daffodil Days, by Helen Bain, reviewed
Leaving London with her husband and daughter to make a new home on the edge of Dartmoor, Sylvia Plath longs for ‘everything to be perfect… and hasn’t learned yet that, in life, nothing can be’
Cynthia Erivo’s Dracula is tiresome
Interest in Dracula seems to go on for ever. Kip Williams has chosen Cynthia Erivo to star in his new…
When did you last see your siblings?
By the age of 18 we will have spent far more time with our brothers and sisters than we will ever spend again – suggesting that blood ties do not guarantee intimacy
The Peaky Blinders film is surprisingly literate
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is the film that fans of the television show have long been waiting for, so…
