Depression
Kathleen Jamie’s luminous new essays brim with sense and sensibility
There is a moment in one of the longer pieces in Surfacing, Kathleen Jamie’s luminous new collection of essays, when…
How to beat the autumn blues
You know that awful, gnawing, depressing feeling you’ve got right now? The one that notices how shockingly early the sun…
Taking pride in household chores really can ease depression
There are many books about what it’s like to live with mental illness and the aftermath of child sexual abuse.…
From bitter loss to sweet relief: baking as therapy
This is a gentle, lovely book. It will, I’m sure, appeal to many an aspiring cook and baker, and should…
A novel about depression that doesn’t depress: Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, reviewed
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has achieved that rare feat, in her second novel Starling Days, of writing a convincing novel about…
Why are children so fearful about the future?
For any bosses from the Singapore education department reading this, I have a message. It comes from (I’d guess) most…
If only we could hibernate all winter
As travel writer, nature writer, memory retriever and, I would add, prose-poet of mesmerising lyricism, Horatio Clare is a celebrant…
Six wintry days in Saratoga Springs: Upstate by James Wood reviewed
Alan Querry, the central figure in James Wood’s second novel, is someone who, in his own words, doesn’t ‘think about…
Antidepressants saved me – but they made my mental health worse
Antidepressants saved my life, I am sure of that. But I am also certain they made my mental illness much…
Don’t let these figures depress you, girls
Are British teenagers suffering from an epidemic of mental illness? Yes, according to a ‘government-funded study’ which found that 24…
Close encounters on the starship Enterprise
For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…
David Astor: the saintly, tormented man who remade the Observer
Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…
Joan Bakewell: on socks, fridge magnets, teddy bears and such stuff
I don’t know if this counts as name-dropping, but I recently interviewed a boyhood friend of Elvis Presley’s in Tupelo,…
Charles Moore’s Notes: cheap trickery in the Economist’s assisted dying campaign
Because, it says, of its ‘liberal values and respect for human dignity’, the Economist has put out a film about…
Woody Allen: a life of jazz, laughter, depression —and a few misdemeanours
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg), the prolific, Oscar-winning auteur, New Orleans-style jazz clarinettist, doyen of New York delicatessen society,…
Smartphones are wonderful – until they take over your life
The smart phone is a wonderful thing. We are never out of touch anymore, neither with friends nor with the…
Edward Thomas: the prolific hack (who wrote a book review every three days for 14 years) turned to poetry just in time
Edward Thomas was gloomy as Eeyore. In 1906 he complained to a friend that his writing ‘was suffering more &…
Why I’m thankful that Atos found me fit to work
I was signed off work five years ago. I had lost my job and was, unsurprisingly, feeling low; I went…
The sofa that became a work of art
Last week on Front Row (Radio 4) the singer Joyce DiDonato recalled the advice she gave the new graduates of…
Radio 4 deserts the British bird. Shame on them!
A strange coincidence on Saturday night to come back from the cinema, having seen a film about a woman fighting…
Breakdowns, suicide attempts — and four great novels
Among the clever young Australians who came over here in the 1960s to find themselves and make their mark, a…
Sane New World, by Ruby Wax - a review
Ruby Wax, who is best known as a comedian, dedicates this book ‘to my mind, which at one point left…
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