Pure word music
Magnus Mills’s novel The Field of the Cloth of Gold is certainly not about is Henry VIII. And what it is about doesn’t really matter. Just enjoy its pure word music
Made in Chelski
Vesna Goldsworthy’s novel about Moscow-on-Thames is a tense, witty page-turner, says Viv Groskop
Words
Late afternoon I speak to Mum on the phone; she’s sorting through her past, four hundred or so odd-sized photographs.…
Dangerously close to home
Attica Locke’s smart legal thriller, Pleasantville, is set in an elegant suburb of Houston, specifically designed for middle-class blacks. But it’s still a ghetto — with very few exit points
Fighting fear with fear
The Master of Suspense was full of fear and paranoia himself, reveals Christopher Bray in a review of two lives of Alfred Hitchcock
Cathedrals on wheels
Stephen Bayley hails the automobile - a miracle of technical and artistic collaboration - and mourns its demise
The legend returns
Irrespective of his 'peace-making', the Israeli-Argentine is the greatest all-round musician in the world
Falling down
Tansy Davies's score marks a real arrival for the British composer but ultimately the opera loses its way
Death by politics
Plus: split in half like the atom, Tom Morton-Smith's Oppenheimer would have twice the force
Cold frames
But the pacing is dreary and the characters do not connect in this period drama about a gardening showdown at the court of Louis XIV
Deadly, not dull
Also there's only one throat-slitting and one burning-at-the-stake, moans James Delingpole
Boris’s London legacy
The Mayor would like his cultural development of the Olympic site to emulate the mighty legacy of the Great Exhibition. But will it?
High life
Red brick tenements, gangsters and genuine working-class accents are a thing of the past in Manhattan
Bridge
When I was growing up, the loudest, most explosive arguments erupted when my parents played bridge together. Not surprisingly, when…
Hit for six
The Hamilton Russell trophy for London clubs has been dominated in the past by the RAC. This year, though, they were…
No. 358
White to play. This is from Lee-Zakharov, Vrnjacka Banja 1963. Black has just captured on c3 and now 1 Qxc3…
On the record
In Competition No. 2893 you were invited to suggest suitable Desert Island Discs for a historical figure, living or dead.…
