Bullying
I actually feel sorry for Prince Andrew
Andrew Lownie’s minutely detailed account of the Duke of York’s disgrace and downfall achieves the near impossible
Truly inspirational: the hospital diary of Hanif Kureishi
‘My world has been smashed...and there is nothing I can do about’, writes Kureishi of the freak accident in 2022 that has left him paralysed. ‘But I will not go under. I will make something of it’
Familiar scenarios: Our Evenings, by Alan Hollinghurst, reviewed
There’s a certain pattern to an Alan Hollinghurst novel. A young gay man goes to Oxford. He’s middle class and…
The misery of growing up in a utopian community
Susanna Crossman recalls her childhood of bullying and sexual molestation in an Orwellian dystopia supposedly devoted to freedom and equality
David Baddiel’s father and mother must be the most talked about parents in Britain
Colin the Dinky Toys dealer, familiar from Baddiel’s TV documentaries, emerges from this memoir as a relentless bully, but at least the ‘fantasist’ Sarah provides suitably funny anecdotes
Women beware women: Wife, by Charlotte Mendelson, reviewed
The claustrophobic bullying in this story of a lesbian marriage that sours is so well done it’s nauseating
Echoes of Tom Brown’s School Days: Rabbits, by Hugo Rifkind, reviewed
When 16-year-old Tommo moves to an elite, brutish boarding school, he longs to fit in and even manages to join the inner circle. But can he ever really become ‘one of them’?
My prep school scarred me for life
‘A part of me died at school’, Charles Spencer writes in his shockingly stark account of sadism and sexual abuse at Maidwell Hall, Northamptonshire, in the 1970s
Bonds and boundaries
Elizabeth Day recognises that real friends need nurturing, and spreading yourself too thinly doesn’t help anyone
A controlling monster
If vivid, drily hilarious tales about messy families stuffed with passive aggression and seething resentment are your thing, you will…
Feat of endurance
Bernardine Evaristo’s Manifesto — part instructional guide for artists, part call to arms for equality, part literary memoir —shimmers with…
Bad blood
In 2016, Arifa Akbar’s elder sister, Fauzia, died suddenly in the Royal Free Hospital, London at the age of 45.…
The parent trap
Gwendoline Riley’s unsentimental fiction hovers on the edge of comedy and bleakness, and has drawn comparisons from Jean Rhys to…
Dear Mary: how can I make my timid husband ask for a longer haircut?
Q. We sent out email invitations to our drinks party and have had too many acceptances. The venue has said…
The fall of Daniel Barenboim
A few years ago, I hooked up with a BBC team in Berlin to record a programme with Daniel Barenboim.…
The snowflake factory
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
The iceberg cometh
Every second novel is fated to be measured against its predecessor; and that comparison is particularly hard when the debut…
The Spectator’s Notes
Speaking on the Today programme on Monday, Sir David Attenborough, who wants a global agreement to control carbon emissions, pointed…
Long life
We learn from a new report that children in England are among the unhappiest in the world — more unhappy,…
Bully laughs
The comedy club theory of dictatorship
Real life
If you are bullied at school, you see, you never stop feeling bullied, no matter how old you are. It…
