Books
The comfort of curling up with a violent thriller
When post-natal depression descends, Lucy Mangan describes reaching for Lee Child, finding catharsis in his no-nonsense villain-bashing
Are these performances of the Bach cantatas the best on record?
Three projects shedding light on the sacred music of J.S. Bach are nearing completion. The first consists of an epic…
Is the tide turning on restitution?
When passions are aroused, all of us are liable to overstate our case. Dan Hicks, a curator at Oxford’s extraordinary…
What makes a good title?
Liszt’s compositions tend to have descriptive titles – ‘Wild Chase’; ‘Dreams of Love’ – whereas Chopin avoided titles. Thomas Wentworth…
How my father’s bedtime stories shaped my life
It’s half an hour before lights out when my dad arrives at my bedroom door holding Roald Dahl’s Danny the…
Advent is the season for revelling in fine wine
Crime. Fear not: none of us was planning to break the law, with the possible exception of hate speech. Where…
My picks for Cheltenham and the Twelve
With farmers outraged, the nation’s biggest employers warning the Budget will bring increased prices and lost jobs and growth out…
What will become of George Orwell’s archives?
The news that a vast cache of material by and concerning George Orwell is about to be cast to the…
Why children have stopped reading
It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent…
Who is your favourite character in children’s literature?
Rod Liddle Rabbits, always rabbits. I remember at age 13 forcing my poor parents to trudge despondently across hilly downland…
The rise of the competitive book list
I’m a hopeless technophobe. I dislike the stylish laptop I’m using and its subdued pad pad pad. I still long…
Rushdie on how the best magical realism transcends fantasy
Ask the man in the street to quote a line from one of Salman Rushdie’s novels, and he might struggle.…
‘You cannot begin by calling me France’s most famous living artist!’: Sophie Calle interviewed
‘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
There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s…
All that remains
Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close
Down the rabbit hole
Don’t cancel Beatrix Potter
Back to black
Michael Hann on the most enduring of pop subcultures
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism
The vandals have come for Roald Dahl. His books for children are to be cleansed of their ‘offensive’ content. Sensitivity…
A feast for the eyes
Jonathan Meades on the art of menus
A call to arms
I’ve agreed to interview the author and journalist Andrew Doyle about his new book at the Conservative party conference –…
Caught in the Mittel
Joseph Roth’s writing about interwar Europe speaks to present-day Ukraine
Salman Rushdie overcame his fear
After Ayatollah Khomeini ordered Muslims to kill him for publishing The Satanic Verses in 1989, Julian Barnes gave Salman Rushdie…
The tiger who came for me
What we can learn from Jim Corbett’s big-cat tales
