Biography
One Leg Too Few may be one biography too many
It’s no joke, writing about comedians. Their work is funny, their lives are not. Rightly honouring the former while accurately…
The abstract art full of 'breasts and bottoms'
Is there any such thing as abstract art? Narratives and coherent harmonies seem to me always to emerge from the…
The man who shared a bed with D.H. Lawrence and Dylan Thomas (though not together)
Rhys Davies was a Welsh writer in English who lived most of his life in London, that Tir na nÓg…
Why did Penelope Fitzgerald start writing so late?
‘Experiences aren’t given us to be “got over”, otherwise they would hardly be experiences.’ The opening sentence of the first…
George Orwell's doublethink
The inventor of ‘doublethink’ was consistently inconsistent in his own political views, says A.N. Wilson. And no fun at all
Was Bach as boring as this picture suggests?
What, one wonders, will John Eliot Gardiner be chiefly remembered for? Perhaps, by many who have worked with him, for…
Queen Victoria, by Matthew Dennison - review
When Prince Albert died in 1861, aged 42, Queen Victoria, after briefly losing the use of her legs, ordered that…
A Strong Song Tows Us, by Richard Burton - review
How minor is minor? ‘Rings a bell’ was more or less the response of two English literature graduates, now successful…
Music at Midnight, by John Drury - review
When John Drury, himself an Anglican divine, told James Fenton (the son of a canon of Christ Church) that he…
Wilkie Collins by Andrew Lycett - review
In the outrageous 2010 press hounding of the innocent schoolteacher Christopher Jefferies over the murder of his young female tenant…
Uncle Bill, by Russell Miller - review
Given the outcome of recent military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is pertinent to look for one particular quality…
Olivier, by Philip Ziegler - review
Philip Ziegler is best known for his biographies, often official, of politicians, royalty and soldiers. They include Harold Wilson, Edward…
Salinger, by David Shields - review
This biography has somewhat more news value than most literary biographies. Its subject worked hard to ensure that. After 1965,…
Raymond Carr by María Jesús Gonzalez - review
This is an unusual book: a Spanish historian writes the life of an English historian of Spain. In doing so,…
Land of Second Chances, by Tim Lewis - review
This is a book about Rwanda. It’s a book about cycling. But it’s not, in the end, a book about…
