Book review
Fun and games at Glin
I have to declare an interest: for many years the Knight and I were the closest of friends until a…
A shaggy dog story
Books become films every day of the week; more rarely does someone feel inspired to write a book after seeing…
Jack all alone
Ten years ago, a determined historian transformed our picture of John F. Kennedy. Robert Dallek had finally got his hands…
Criminal damage
Anyone with a passing interest in old British buildings must get angry at the horrors inflicted on our town centres…
The long and winding road
If you have read Iain Sinclair’s books you will know that he is a stylist with a love of language.…
A choice of cookery books
Nigel Slater’s books lead the field in cookery book design, but his latest, Eat: The Little Book of Fast Food…
The manager, not the man
For a quarter of a century Sir Alex Ferguson bestrode football’s narrow world like a colossus. Like his predecessor knight-manager,…
How to enrich your life
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
Spoilt for choice
Nigel Simeone’s title for his edition of Leonard Bernstein’s correspondence rings compellingly, novellistically, through the force of the definite article,…
Thirty years on
Cig 1 Auld Reekie . . . Edinburgh . . . brewers’ town, stinking of beer, whisky, tweeness, gentility, hypocrisy,…
For the fallen
We constantly need to be reminded that the consequence of war is death. In the case of the first world…
Strength in numbers
Numbers, as every mathematician knows, do odd things. But they’re never odder than in the human context. Ever since we…
Strong meat
Fans of Count Arthur Strong (and yes I know he’s so Marmite you could spread him on a cheese sandwich)…
Sleeping with the enemy
Around 200 Englishwomen lived through the German Occupation of Paris. Nicholas Shakespeare’s aunt Priscilla was one. Men in the street…
Too many Cooks…
It’s no joke, writing about comedians. Their work is funny, their lives are not. Rightly honouring the former while accurately…
Thinking outside the box
Everyone loves an anniversary and the crossword world — if there is such a thing — has been waiting a…
No country for old men
‘Is he a good writer? Is he pro-regime?’ an Iranian journalist in London once asked me of Hooman Majd. Majd…
The house-party from hell
It is perhaps the most celebrated house-party in the history of literary tittle-tattle: a two-house-party to be precise. Byron and…
Nationalist stirrings
Philip Hensher on how an impassioned, chaotic group of amateur 19th-century composers created the first distinctively Russian music
The good companion
‘Goodbye to the Mezzogiorno’ was the first Auden poem that Alexander McCall Smith read in his youth. He discovered it…
Seduction made easy
Spectator readers need no introduction to Peter Jones. His Ancient and Modern column has instructed and delighted us for many…
Reading a face
Do you think you can tell things about writers from the way they look in a painting or photograph? A…
Manners for beginners
Sandi Toksvig, as this book’s cover declares, ‘makes Stephen Fry look like a layabout’. The broadcaster, author, comedian, actress and…
The baby and the bathwater
Mrs Christabel Russell, the heroine of Bevis Hillier’s sparkling book, was a very modern young woman. She had short blonde…
A touch of Frost
Is there any such thing as abstract art? Narratives and coherent harmonies seem to me always to emerge from the…
