Memoir
Carry on laughing
Sylvia Patterson manages to bring much rackety humour to bear in her descriptions of the pain and indignity her treatment involves
The root of the problem
The novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo is attracted by the freedom a New York job promises, but misses the young daughter she has left behind in London
Literary charades
Blending fact and fiction, France combines a tale of antics on a creative writing course with episodes from her family life
Father figures
In a second memoir, Motion focuses on how he became a poet, and his search for father figures, including W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin
Pie in the sky
Frieda Hughes adopts an unfledged orphan bird, regarding him as ‘a magical creature’ – but few others find him so engaging
Human and divine
Attendance is in serious decline, but our churches have much to offer, especially in times of crisis, and we neglect their crumbling fabric at our peril
Communing with an ancestor
Ian Marchant, diagnosed with cancer in 2020, takes comfort from his ancestor’s diary (1714-28), recording a full life as farmer and mainstay of his parish
Loved and lost
The third act of Morrison’s family saga focuses on Gill, the once loving and generous sister he was so close to but was unable to save
Our understanding disability
This book reveals one man’s determination to enable his brother to live his best life. It is also a fable…
Secret assignations
Adam Sisman on the private life of John le Carré, revealed in letters and a kiss-and-tell
The road less travelled
How best to write a book about the Himalayas when Mount Everest has been reduced to just another tick-off on…
The fate of castaways
Absent mothers resonate in the latest offerings from two heavyweights of French literature. Getting Lost is the diary kept by…
The Middle East maelstrom
For 25 years, Abed Takkoush assisted foreign reporters like Jeremy Bowen when they arrived to cover the chaos and conflicts…
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 home between worlds
When asked what it is we do, translators often resort to metaphors. We liken the act of translation to performing…
You eat what you see
Farmer, restaurateur, critic, foodie activist, traveller (he’s worked in Zimbabwe as well as South Africa), cookery book writer, longtime TV…
A sadder and a wiser man
‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…
Conflict in the Highlands
On the face of it, a book about a woman stalking one red deer might not sound that exciting. Just…
A multiplicity of Italys
Towards the end of Dandelions, Thea Lenarduzzi’s imaginative and deeply affecting memoir, the author quotes her grandmother’s remark that there…
Last words
Facing up to the prospect of one’s own mortality is always jarring; but when you’ve spent your life trying, and…
A sentimental journey
Publishers lately seem to have got the idea that otherwise uncommercial subjects might be rendered sexy if presented with a…
Journey to selfhood
Seán Hewitt, born in 1990, realised that he was gay at a very early age. ‘A kind, large woman’ who…
Making scientific history
In 1993 William Waldegrave, the science minister, was looking into a project being planned on the continent. Cern, the European…
The lady in the caravan
Towards the end of a long relationship – ‘resolved to have a conversation about the Future, which meant Separating’ –…
Riding the feedless horse
Jody Rosen lives and cycles in Brooklyn, which makes him what the Mexican essayist Julio Torri calls ‘a suicide apprentice’.…
