Books
Diary
This last week, in India, I visited six cities in seven days: Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and New Delhi.…
Novel distractions
Procrastination is easier in the age of Google – but less honest
Diary
Just back from Sri Lanka, a place I first went to in 1981. It was then a dreamy island. I…
Glasgow School of Art
I was working on the final edit of my book — a fictionalised account of the year Charles Rennie Mackintosh…
High life
Welcome to 2015, the year that speaking and writing freely had to stop. Anything that might cause trauma to anyone…
Diary
Soon after I joined the Sun as managing editor (among other things, I used to review novels for The Spectator),…
S&M and B&Q
I never got beyond page 20 in Fifty Shades of Grey. No one got shot in the first chapter, and…
Dear Mary
Q. What can you do when disorganised friends say they would love to come to a concert with you but…
Diary
It was quite fun being named as the new writer of 007 — although actually I’d make a lousy spy.…
An excess of spin
Pietersen’s self-indulgent tales of woe lack credibility
Battle of the bookworms
‘Did you find it a good read?’ asked Harrriett Gilbert. An incredibly long drawn-out sigh from Mr Paxman. ‘I think…
Diary
No, no, no, you don’t want a house abroad — the paperwork, the taxes, the piping, the cost of the…
Dear Mary
Q. A scholarly book of great importance to me appears to have gone missing from my library. It was heavily…
The freedom of the heat
Those of us who have been struggling to endure the recent heat should turn to L.P. Hartley’s classic coming-of-age novel The…
Welcome to the club
Writing frankly about Jamaica has made me nervous of invitations from strangers. How would this one turn out?
An open book
Kindle highlights turn the lonely pleasures of reading into a communal event
Barometer
Escape committees An LSE/Institute for Government report estimated the cost of Scottish independence at £2.7 billion, a sum arrived at…
Dear Mary
Q. My dear English husband has never mastered the knack of timing his interventions in conversation. He hesitates politely, and…
Port and daughters
Port, or Hermitage? This does not refer to personal consumption. I was trying to remember Meredith’s Egoist, in which one…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that inheritance tax ‘shouldn’t be paid by people who’ve worked hard and saved…
Diary
The week leading up to publication is a strange time for any author. You subject yourself to doing everything from…
Sex by the book
Is there any kind of love that novelists still can’t touch?
Diary
As any author will tell you, literary festivals differ widely. If you are invited to Willy Dalrymple’s Jaipur Festival, with…
Dear Mary
Q. I gave a copy of Dan Russel the Fox by Somerville and Ross to a couple I know to be…
How the MPs’ expenses scandal proves the wisdom of Alain de Botton
Whenever I’m tempted to pretend to be nicer so that fewer people hate me, I remember my old friend Alain…
