Books

Why I self-publish my books

13 January 2024 9:00 am

‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed

4 November 2023 9:00 am

‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’ Thus Sophie Calle objected to the first line of…

Comedy of the blackest kind: Boy Parts, at Soho Theatre, reviewed

4 November 2023 9:00 am

There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s…

On the trail of Roman Turkey with Don McCullin

19 August 2023 9:00 am

Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close

Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter

3 June 2023 9:00 am

Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter

In praise of goths – the most enduring of pop subcultures

27 May 2023 9:00 am

Michael Hann on the most enduring of pop subcultures

The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism

19 February 2023 9:57 pm

The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity…

The art of menus

1 October 2022 9:00 am

Jonathan Meades on the art of menus

I’m on Andrew Doyle’s side – for now

1 October 2022 9:00 am

I’ve agreed to interview the author and journalist Andrew Doyle about his new book at the Conservative party conference –…

What young Ukrainians will learn from reading Joseph Roth

3 September 2022 9:00 am

Joseph Roth’s writing about interwar Europe speaks to present-day Ukraine

Salman Rushdie overcame his fear

13 August 2022 8:13 pm

After Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Muslims to kill him for publishing The Satanic Verses in 1989, Julian Barnes gave Salman Rushdie…

What we can all learn from Jim Corbett’s tiger tales

6 August 2022 9:00 am

What we can learn from Jim Corbett’s big-cat tales

The perfect pairing of books and wine

28 May 2022 9:00 am

In the West End of London there is an alley which insinuates its way between the Charing Cross Road and…

The endless tiny errors of the NHS

28 May 2022 9:00 am

I wrote recently elsewhere about Jeremy Hunt’s good new book examining unnecessary deaths in the NHS. Someone should write a…

My Sally Rooney conversion

15 May 2022 4:00 pm

I tried to dislike the writing of Sally Rooney. But I failed. I retain some resistance to Sally Rooney the…

‘I came, I saw, I scribbled’: Shane MacGowan on Bob Dylan, angels and his lifelong love of art

30 April 2022 9:00 am

Graeme Thomson talks to former Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan about his first art folio

The chief characteristic so far has been nervousness: Chivalry reviewed

23 April 2022 9:00 am

Chivalry – written by and starring Sarah Solemani and Steve Coogan – is a comedy drama about post-#MeToo Hollywood life.…

A wonderfully unguarded podcast about the last bohemians

23 April 2022 9:00 am

Ordinarily, if a podcast purports to be revelatory, you can assume it is anything but. There’s a glut of programmes…

The cult of sensitivity

23 April 2022 9:00 am

I was extra pleased to have swerved the modern curse that is Wordle when I read that ‘sensitive’ words have…

The books that made me who I am

12 March 2022 9:00 am

Gstaad This is my last week in the Alps and I’m trying to get it all in – skiing, cross-country,…

Some of the best social commentary around: Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily reviewed

5 March 2022 9:00 am

When I was ten years old I had a babysitter who was a beautiful graduate student at an Ivy League…

In praise of the Dome

26 February 2022 9:00 am

We should learn to love our turn-of-the-millennium architecture, says Helen Barrett, starting with the Dome

Why don't I come with a trigger warning?

5 February 2022 9:00 am

Last week brought the news that some universities have attached more ‘trigger warnings’ to certain books, concerned that students may…

Why do British galleries shun the humane, generous art of Ruskin Spear?

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Where do you see paintings by Ruskin Spear (1911–90)? In the salerooms mostly, because his work in public collections is…

Robert Harris on Boris Johnson, cancel culture and rehabilitating Chamberlain

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Nigel Jones talks to the writer Robert Harris about Blair, Johnson and Polanski, cancel culture and his quest to rehabilitate Neville Chamberlain