Literature
Writing as revenge: Memories of the Future, by Siri Hustvedt, reviewed
Why are people interested in their past? One possible reason is that you can interact with it, recruiting it as…
Critical injuries: the perils of book reviews
A decade ago, a publisher produced a set of short biographies of Britain’s 20th-century prime ministers, which I reviewed unenthusiastically.…
The two works of fiction I re-read annually
Long ago, I interviewed Edmund White and found that the photographer assigned to the job was the incomparable Jane Bown…
Who really wants to read feminist children’s books?
A friend of mine who commissions book reviews has added a sub-category to the list of titles coming up: ‘femtrend’,…
How I write
How do they do it? Among writers, the earnest audience member at a literary festival who asks, ‘Do you write…
The poetic state of the nation
What I’ve learned from reciting verse in the street
Among the snobs, slobs and scolds
The author of this jam-packed treasure trove has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000 and…
Autumn
Each year when I see the first conker of the autumn I think: fire up the ancestral ovens! This incendiary…
The library in the Jungle
In the middle of the Calais migrant camp, there is a book-filled haven of peace
Come rain or shine
‘Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing,’ pleads Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘Whenever people…
Passionate pioneers
If Mary Wollstonecraft, as she once declared, ‘was not born to tred in the beaten track’, the same with even…
Friend or foe?
One fine day in June 1896, a lone Russian nihilist visited Leo Tolstoy on his country estate. Come to hear…
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
Sex by the book
Is there any kind of love that novelists still can’t touch?
New York notebook
Bard College in upstate New York, where I teach in the spring semester, is an interesting institution, once better known…
By the book – The perils of snooping
The continuing drip-feed of stories about governments and friendly-seeming internet giants sifting through our data has left some citizens feeling…
Tortured genius
Among the clever young Australians who came over here in the 1960s to find themselves and make their mark, a…
A dangerous heroine addiction
This book arose from an argument. Lifelong bookworm Samantha Ellis and her best friend had gone to Brontë country and…
How to enrich your life
Among the precursors to this breezy little book are, in form, the likes of The Story of Art, Our Island…
A far diet from Kensington
Those of you dieting your way to a svelte physique amid the flesh-exposing terrors of summer should take courage from…
Arab Spring
Two hundred and forty-years ago next Tuesday, Thomas Gray was buried in his mother’s grave in Stoke Poges churchyard. In…
