Books
Ivory towers
Great novels rarely make great movies, but for half a century one director has been showing all the others how…
Match made in heaven
Tennis is best played with a wooden racket on a shady lawn somewhere close to Dorking. There is no need…
Learning the secrets of happiness from Britain’s most foul-mouthed angler
To go fishing on the Itchen in mayfly season, you either have to be very, very rich or very, very…
Junk Bond
After six decades, it’s time we were done with 007
Paul McCartney
It’s slightly galling, after years of sticking up for Paul McCartney, to read a new biography of the bloke and…
When novels kill
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
The poetic state of the nation
What I’ve learned from reciting verse in the street
Oh, what a lovely Waugh!
My father, Evelyn Waugh, enjoyed pretending to be a horror. He wasn’t
Who steals books?
At my shop, it seems to be everyone from students to organised professional gangs
Away with the angels?
John Dee liked to talk to spirits but he was no loony witch, says Christopher Howse
Diary
So far my responsibilities as the 2016 chair of the Man Booker prize have been rather light. We’ve had our…
United Arab Emirates: Leaves in the desert
Who goes to the Sharjah International Book Fair? Sam Leith, for one
Lessons from Utopia
Thomas More’s 1516 classic is a textbook for our troubled times, says William Cook
New word order
Peter Robins reports from Nottingham on a unique adaptation of a novel by the literary innovator B.S. Johnson
Christmas lists
William Brown had the right idea about Christmas lists. Under the heading ‘Things I Want for Christmas’, he requests: a…
Ian Rankin’s diary: Paris, ignoring Twitter and understanding evil
After ten days away, I spent last Friday at home alone, catching up on washing, shopping for cat food, answering…
Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing
Jenny McCartney talks to unstoppable literary force Colm Tóibín about loss, priests and half-said things
Edmund de Waal’s diary: Selling nothing, and why writers need ping-pong
On the top landing of the Royal Academy is the Sackler Sculpture Corridor, a long stony shelf of torsos of…
Hitler’s émigrés
German-speaking refugees dragged British culture into the 20th century. But that didn’t go down well in Stepney or Stevenage, says William Cook
Club mischief
When it comes to nightclubs, many have written, but none has surpassed the Perroquet in Debra Dowa. Le tout Debra…
Diary
During our annual odyssey around the Scottish Highlands, I read Tears of the Rajas, Ferdinand Mount’s eloquent indictment of imperial…
Cock and bull
It’s hard to know whether the actor James Norton was being naive or disingenuous when he claimed in publicity interviews…
Diary
‘Devon, Devon, Devon/ Where it rains six days out of seven.’ Nothing beats a British seaside holiday. And north Devon…
The contagious madness of the new PC
Obsessive searching for hurt and offence will create it where once it never existed
If On the Road’s great, what else have I missed?
This week’s column is dedicated to all those of you who have never read Catcher in the Rye and who,…
