Memoir
Bad blood
In 2016, Arifa Akbar’s elder sister, Fauzia, died suddenly in the Royal Free Hospital, London at the age of 45.…
Two sides of the Storey
Jasper Rees remembers David Storey, giant of postwar English culture and wry teller of tales, whose newly published memoir is perhaps his most remarkable work
Prepare for take-off
Come Fly the World is not the book I thought I was getting. The slightly (surely deliberately) pulpy cover —…
On the track of a great fiddle
An extraordinary omission from Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects is the lyre, the instrument closest…
A spiteful muse
Monica Jones certainly proved Philip Larkin’s equal for racism and misogyny, says Andrew Motion
A daughter’s duty
There comes a time after the death of parents when grief subsides, the sense of loss eases, and you, the…
Everyday inspiration
‘One of the nicest things about being a writer,’ Shirley Jackson once noted in a lecture titled ‘How I Write’,…
The time of our lives
Gay bar, how I miss you. Barely any lesbian joints have survived the online dating scene, and Grindr has replaced…
Cycle of pain
Suffering from post-traumatic stress and the effects of government austerity measures, Paul Jones resigned as the head of an inner-city…
One who got away
Hella Pick is one of that vanishing generation of Jewish refugees who arrived in Britain on the eve of the…
Holiday retreats
It was the 13th-century wall of a ruined Cistercian nunnery at the far end of her garden in Norfolk that…
Inherited trauma
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
A study in parental tyranny
In a career stretching back to the mid-1980s, Robert Edric has so far managed a grand total of 28 novels,…
The struggle to put bread on the table
Wheat flour, and the bread made from it, has been a recurring cause of concern for the British for centuries,…
The sister from hell
A while ago, Samantha Markle declared that her forthcoming book would be about ‘the beautiful nuances of our lives’. Was…
Moi… Lolita
Until this book was published, Gabriel Matzneff was a respectable man. The French author may have written about his affairs…
The curse of Cain
When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to…
Misery handed on
What happens to a child raised without love? This is the agonising question that the American lawyer Justine Cowan braces…
It wasn’t rocket science Jay Elwes
In the summer of 2012, a man was walking near Jabal Shashabo, a Syrian rebel enclave, when he spotted a…
A real wild child
Although I can understand why Dana Gillespie might choose to call her memoir after her most famous album, for the…
Avenging Amiel
If this book becomes a Netflix blockbuster, as it surely must, Barbara Amiel presents us with an opening image. She…
Girls behaving badly
Saying you don’t like Bananarama is like saying you don’t like summer or Marilyn Monroe — a sure sign of…
Slaves to hunger
‘It was a gray mass of people in rags, lying motionless with bloodless, pale faces, cropped hair, with a shifty,…
A macabre legend
The problem with telling stories about Harvard is that Harvard, if it teaches anything these days, teaches distrust of stories.…
Fabulous fabrics
On the weekly ‘opinions’ afternoons, the public would arrive with carefully wrapped parcels holding items to be identified, writes Claire…
