Book review
Goodbye to all that
In the latest – and best – of the books on the end of the USSR, Victor Sebestyen finds that the only good thing about the Soviet empire was the manner of its passing
How to read well
What the title promises is not found inside. It is a tease. John Sutherland says he has ‘been paid one…
The lure of Europe
A tour of the Continent was a prerequisite for young Jacobean noblemen training for statesmanship — provided they resisted its corrupting influence, says Blair Worden
More blood and mud
Countless writers and film-makers this year will be trying their hand at forcing us to wake up and smell the…
A dangerous heroine addiction
This book arose from an argument. Lifelong bookworm Samantha Ellis and her best friend had gone to Brontë country and…
At home with the Bloomsberries
Above the range in the kitchen at Charleston House is a painted inscription: ‘Grace Higgens worked here for 50 years…
‘The most important Jewish writer since Kafka’
Ian Thomson on the turbulent life of Clarice Lispector
We were not amused
Princess Louise (1848–1939), Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, was the prettiest and liveliest of the five princesses, and the only one…
Eat, drink and be merry…
... for tomorrow traditional seasonal rituals may just be ghostly memories of a vanished world, says Melanie McDonagh
Between tenderness and rage
In the autumn of 2012, Philip Roth told a French magazine that his latest book, Nemesis, would be his last.…
The healing art
In calling their book Art as Therapy Alain de Botton and John Armstrong have taken the direct route. They’re not…
Blazing saddles
Unlike many celebrity memoirs, Anjelica Huston’s is worth reading. In her Prologue she writes that as a child she modeled…
Reds under the beds
Leon Trotsky’s grandson, Esteban Volkov, is a retired chemist in his early eighties. I met him not long ago in…
Aesthete and huckster
Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat
Not dynamite, more blancmange
Debunking reputations is now out of fashion, says Philip Hensher, and Craig Raine should give it up — especially as he always misses the point
The maiden aunt of modernism
Marianne Moore’s poems are notoriously ‘difficult’ but her personality and the circumstances of her life are as fascinating today as…
Getting the claws out
The New Yorker has always had a peculiar affinity with cats, perhaps because they have a lot in common —…
Who’s up, who’s down
‘Nothing’s funny any more’ has become the daily mantra of this magazine’s cartoon editor, Michael Heath. Thanks to Leveson, political…
No place for sissies
The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a story for the older reader. One might go so far as to suggest…
Unconditional love
Halfway through her new novel, Margaret Drabble tells us of Anna, the pure gold baby of the title, ‘There was…
Boundless blessings
Ann Patchett’s novels revel in the tightly constructed ecosystems imagined for their characters: an opera singer besieged among diplomats in…
Homage to Elizabeth the first
‘She wrote fiction?’ Even today, with the admirable ladies at Virago nearly finished reissuing her dozen novels, Elizabeth Taylor remains…
Cubism domesticated
Over the past 45 years, there have been two distinct and divergent approaches to Art Deco. One of them —…
Gossip, gossip from all the nations
Under normal circumstances, Simon Garfield’s chatty and informative excursion into the history of letter-writing would be a book to recommend.…
Images that glow in the mind
In 1983, Damien Hirst saw an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery of the collages of Francis Davison which ‘blew him…
