Unhappy in their own way
A review of Not My Father's Son, by Alan Cumming. It's an autobiography that pits a kindly grandfather against a cruel father
Goodman’s Garden
Where did they all go? Thickets of love and pain rustle in a dry light and skeins of corvidae traipse…
Heads will roll
A review of Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found, by Frances Lanson. A grimly amusing and possibly definitive survey of a disquieting subject
Europe in sixty languages
A review of Lingo, by Gaston Dorren. A series of quirky linguistic stories full etymological pleasures
Surviving The Cut
A review of The Old Vic: The Story of a Great Theatre from Kean to Olivier to Spacey, by Terry Coleman, and Closely Observed Theatre: From the National to the Old Vic, by Jonathan Croall. Where's the critical thinking?
Skulls and cross bones
A review of A Tour of Bones, by Denise Inge. A wise, fresh and brutally frank tour of Europe's charnel-houses
Cry, the beloved country
A review of The Fires of Autumn, by Irène Némirovsky, translated by Sandra Smith. It's the last of Nemirovsky's wartime novels to be translated into English and is better read as a draft
The first and last puzzle
Answer: Georges Perec. And it shows in his writing. A review of Portrait of a Man, by Georges Perec, translated and with an introduction by David Bellos
Mademoiselle Non
The Marmite ballerina retires next year. Ismene Brown talks to her about legs, boobs and changing people’s lives
Warts and all
When it comes to realistic portraiture, Moroni was even greater than Titian - as this Royal Academy exhibition shows
Slow burn
Plus: let’s not restrict the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse to Jacobean bloodbaths like ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Let’s stage gigs there too
Autumn round-up
Plus: an Autumn round-up including charismatic collaborations between Israel Galvan and Akram Khan, and duds from the Royal Ballet
Don’t look now
Plus: Michael Tanner accepts the strangeness of Donizetti’s Les Martyrs, but is it any good?
India’s sacrifice
Plus: Frank Cottrell Boyce goes in search of the girls of Gretna Green who manufactured cordite during the war
On war and remembrance
James Delingpole is proud that Britain will do anything rather than admit it’s finished as a fighting nation
Bridge
It’s always good to know where you draw the line and my line, drawn in thick black ink, was going…
Force Majeure
The common feature of the first two games of the World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen in…
