Marriage
A mother-daughter love story
In her latest memoir, Leslie Jamison describes her pregnancy, experience of childbirth and devotion to her baby, returning repeatedly to the dilemmas of a working mother
No one could match Tess, to Thomas Hardy’s dismay
Hardy’s 38-year marriage to Emma Gifford was notoriously acrimonious; but even his much younger second wife, Florence, never seemed to measure up to his fictional heroines
A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed
‘The cogs are seizing up, the lights are going out.’ As Elizabeth Costello clears her desk in this collection of stories, we feel that Coetzee may be doing the same
‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance
The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion
Drowning in the typing pool
For decades, undereducated girls were thwarted before they even started in the workplace, living in the slipstream of men and drip-fed with a sense of their own uselessness
A born storyteller
Instead of swashbuckling, we get the Parisian art world, trout-fishing, unhappy couples and surrogate parenting – though the 20 stories for children are full of adventure
A whale of a problem
Restoring the painting ‘View of Scheveningen Sands’, an art conservationist uncovers a vital detail, leading her to regret the pact she once made with her husband
Never the bride
Tom Williams describes how two women’s hopes of marrying T.S. Eliot came to nothing
Loved and lost
Richard E. Grant pulls off a feat here. The title is twee but the content isn’t. With unselfpitying dash the…
A bold departure
Ian McEwan’s latest novel is unusually long and autobiographical. It’s surprising in other ways, too, says Claire Lowdon
One day in Dublin
Emilie Pine writes about the big things and the little things: friendship, love, fertility, grief; waking, showering, catching the bus.…
Anxiety is killing parenthood
Britain is on a slow descent to oblivion. Scotland is even closer to the abyss, with a birth rate of…
Finding a voice
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
We are all mysteries
‘Reading is a celebration of the mystery of ourselves,’ according to Elizabeth Strout, who writes to help readers understand themselves…
The wife’s story
‘One day,’ she writes, ‘we had the Minister for Northern Ireland for the night. He arrived wearing a kilt, which…
From cradle to grave
You need to be wary of being too flattering about English churches. As John Betjeman said: ‘Be careful before you…
Three brides for three brothers
Sunjeev Sahota’s novels present an unvarnished image of British Asian lives. Ours Are the Streets chronicles a suicide bomber’s radicalisation,…
High life
Gstaad After six-and-a-half months apart, I had no trouble recognising my wife. Out she came on to the driveway to…
Forget race or class, marriage is the big social divide
The latest spark to ignite the culture wars is a report from the parliamentary education committee on the underachievement of…
Boris Johnson’s refusal to talk about faith
I am struggling to make sense of the Prime Minister’s answer to my question: whether he is a practising Roman…
A daughter’s duty
There comes a time after the death of parents when grief subsides, the sense of loss eases, and you, the…
The lock of love
Being stuck at home will make our relationships stronger
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Q. Our son and his girlfriend have announced their engagement and we are delighted with his choice. Our problem is…
