You’re fired!
Washington D.C. Even a reality show needs good plot twists, and Donald Trump has delivered them like the master he…
A fighting chance
‘We remember it not only for the rain that fell, the mud that weighed down the living and swallowed the…
Girl power
England won the cricket World Cup for the fourth time. Huzzah! England reached the semi-finals of the European football championship.…
Snapping point
Our family holiday snaps used to be slides. We’d gather in the sitting room while Dad clicked through each one.…
Whither Ukip?
‘Some wine? How about a beer? Shall we settle into a good old pub?’ I make these suggestions to Ukip’s…
The Surrey hills
I live in the oldest village in England. How come? Well, in a field below the big house, there is…
Riot chic
Last weekend, I got into a conversation with the son of an old friend. He’s a nice middle-class boy, mid-twenties,…
to 2318: Groundwork
SOIL (9) — cryptically indicated by ISLAND IN THE SUN (1A), the title of a SONG (40) recorded by HARRY…
Greenland and India
‘Remember what the fellow said — it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile,’…
Object lesson
Why did Henri Matisse not play chess? It’s a question, perhaps, that few have ever pondered. Yet the great artist…
Separation anxiety
As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian…
In praise of Netflix
All this week I have been trying, with considerable success, to avoid being bludgeoned by TV programmes telling me in…
Losing our religion
Sir James MacMillan’s European Requiem, performed at the Proms on Sunday, isn’t about Brexit. The composer had to make this…
Starting block
Conor McPherson’s new play is set in dust-bowl Minnesota in 1934. We’re in a fly-blown boarding house owned by skint,…
2321: Cleaner
One unclued light, defined by the title, is a word that can be divided into three words; each of these…
The morality of conducting
Now he is the greatest figure for me, in the world. [Toscanini is] the last proud, noble, unbending representative (with…
Torn between envy and contempt
Arriving at boarding school with the wrong shoes and a teddy bear in his suitcase, the hero of Elizabeth Day’s…
No pain, no gain
It is an unexpected pleasure when fiction has a soundtrack to accompany the work of reviewing. H(A)PPY is ‘best enjoyed…
Pretentious rock on a grand scale
There is many a book that has been cooked up over a liquid lunch, but rarely has one been so…
A choice of first novels
Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…
Some insights into autism
The Reason I Jump, by the autistic Japanese teenager Naoki Higashida, was a surprise bestseller in 2013. Rendered as a…
… and an awesome beak
The Enigma of Kidson is a quintessentially Etonian book: narcissistic, complacent, a bit silly and ultimately beguiling. It is the…
Formidable black talons…
I often feel slightly sorry for the British nature writer. It’s not an attractive emotion — it sounds patronising —…
Heroines of the Soviet Union
Klara Goncharova, a Soviet anti-aircraft gunner, wondered at the end of the second world war how anyone could stand to…
The evil that men do
The first thing to say about Claudio Magris’s new novel is that it is, in an important sense, unreadable. There…
