Letter from Somaliland
Ayan Mahamoud, one of the organisers of Hargeysa’s International Book Fair, has all the girly vulnerability of a factory-tested steel…
Notes on…Rome
Leave Florence and Sienna to the aesthetes. Let the in-crowd do Naples and Palermo. For the amateur Italophile, Rome is…
Writ in stone
James McConnachie finds that theology and geology have been unlikely bedfellows for centuries
At cross purposes
Justin Cartwright is famously a fan of John Updike — and here he seems to owe a definite debt to…
From brilliance to burn-out
Thick, sentimental and with a narrative bestriding four decades, Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings feels above all like a Victorian novel,…
Here comes everybody
This is an unusual book: a Spanish historian writes the life of an English historian of Spain. In doing so,…
Escapism for the gullible
The two opening volumes of Margaret Atwood’s trilogy have sold over a million copies. One of them managed to be…
Heaven
Perhaps Heaven is like being foreign abroad where even the groceries appear exotic. All is before you exactly as it…
The Pepys de nos jours
Frederic Raphael is forensic in his description of the failures of successful people. He is enviously superior and he is…
The moving picture of life
Almost 30 years after his death, François Truffaut remains a vital presence in the cinema. Terrence Malick and Wes Anderson…
Recent crime fiction
Denise Mina’s 11th crime novel, The Red Road (Orion, £12.99), is one of her best, which is saying a good…
Fighting communism single-handed
Had Onan not spilled his seed upon the ground, he might have invented invisible ink. The possibility had not occurred…
Trying to keep afloat
The unlikely heroine of Mave Fellowes’s Chaplin & Company (Cape, £16.99) is a highly-strung, posh-speaking, buttoned-up 18-year-old with the unhelpful…
Under the radar
A major exhibition of Australian art is about to open at the Royal Academy. Barry Humphries believes visitors will be surprised
Spreading Brecht’s message
Lloyd Evans talks to Henry Goodman about his role in the playwright’s political allegory
The magic of Munnings
Sir Alfred Munnings (1878–1959) did himself a grave and lasting disservice when he publicly attacked modern art in a bibulous…
Quest for Tank Man
Chimerica. The weird title of Lucy Kirkwood’s hit play conjoins the names of the eastern and western superpowers and promises…
Elder’s evening
The Proms season of Wagner operas — pity they didn’t do them all; Die Meistersinger would have been specially welcome,…
Let us eat cake
I’m not crazy about cookery shows. I suspect they indicate how little we are cooking, rather than how much. We’re…
Stoppard territory
How many listeners, I wonder, actually tuned in to Darkside as it went out on air on Radio 2, after…
Home viewing
Venice may be the oldest film festival in the world but it is still breaking new ground. This week film-lovers…
High life
Gstaad I’ve met Stephen Fry twice in my life, both times long ago. The first time at a dinner given…
Low life
This time last year the postman delivered a picture postcard depicting a village square in Provence. The photograph on the…
