Books

No nonsense in the kitchen

25 November 2023 9:00 am

The forthright food columnist Rachel Cooke has little patience with faddy eaters, ‘meditative’ kitchen tasks or the craze for Portuguese custard tarts

The last battle: The Future, by Naomi Alderman, reviewed

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Sinister preparations for the apocalypse by a few Silicon Valley billionaires must be thwarted in this part-thriller, part-Big Tech critique, part-meditation on doomsday

The Duke of Windsor had much to be thankful for

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Defending the ‘maligned’ Duke, Jane Marguerite Tippett fails to mention how hard officials worked to suppress evidence of his treachery and prevent a court martial in 1940

A multicultural microcosm: Brooklyn Crime Novel, by Jonathan Lethem, reviewed

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Lethem returns to the borough with a tale of violence, neglect and demographic change over the decades, tinged with nostalgia but far from sentimental

The real problem with ChatGPT is that it can never make a joke

25 November 2023 9:00 am

When Andy Stanton commands the AI program to tell him a story about a blue whale with a tiny penis, the result, as it unfolds, drives him a bit insane

Surreal visions: the best of this year’s art books reviewed

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Subjects include Anna Atkins’s cyanotypes, Leonora Carrington’s paintings, Albrecht Dürer’s dreams and the photographs of Lee Miller

A choice of this year’s cook books

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Recipes and food history from Blanche Vaughan, Sky McAlpine, Pen Vogler, Fuschia Dunlop and Fred Hogge, among others

The feel-good football story of Watford Forever

18 November 2023 9:00 am

From the age of six, Reggie Dwight followed Watford FC’s fortunes avidly – and when he became the multimillionaire Elton John decided to do all he could to improve them

Prejudice in Pennsylvania: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride, reviewed

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Inspired by his own family history, McBride explores the problems faced by a Jewish shopkeeper and her black neighbours in the small town of Chicken Hill in the 1930s

Leap of faith: the miraculous phenomenon of levitating saints

18 November 2023 9:00 am

St Joseph of Cupertino liked to nest in the tops of trees, and Allied pilots were dissuaded by the airborne Padre Pio from dropping bombs near his monastery in Apulia

The balance of power between humans and machines

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Robert Skidelsky dismisses the possibility of our annihilation by a superintelligent computer system, since ‘science tells us that we cannot create such a being’. But does it?

How has the Conservative party’s ‘Dr No’ escaped everyone’s notice for so long?

18 November 2023 9:00 am

This malevolent figure has been at the centre of the party for more than 40 years, says Nadine Dorries. But nothing in The Plot bears much relation to reality

Was there ever a time of equality in human society?

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Living in open savannahs, men and women had no choice but to cooperate. But evolution caused men to fight and dominate, resulting in sexism and social hierarchy

Rip-roaring satire in Iota

11 November 2023 9:00 am

This novel is the ninth book of the satirical series concerning Grafton Everest, a rambunctious, overweight, fictional academic who, as…

The best of this year’s children’s books

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Among many delights, the Greco-Persian wars are brought to thrilling new life and a truly bizarre Alaskan folk tale is retold

Why do the British still dream of bricks and mortar?

11 November 2023 9:00 am

For the past century, a ‘property-owning democracy’ has been envisaged as a kind of magic cure for social ills. But high prices now mean the opposite of emancipation for many

Magnificent men in their automobiles: the 1907 Peking-Paris rally

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Kassia St Clair tells the gripping story of how competitors drove 15,000 km across mountains, desert and flooded rivers to prove the practicality of the early motor car

Tea and treachery: Sheep’s Clothing, by Celia Dale, reviewed

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Posing as social services employees, two female ex-cons talk their way into the homes of elderly widows in order to drug them and steal their valuables

From the Odyssey to The Wizard of Oz: Praiseworthy, by Alexis Wright, reviewed

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Everything blends into everything else as an Aboriginal knight errant sets out on a quest to save his scorched native bushlands

The horror of finding oneself ‘young-old’

11 November 2023 9:00 am

‘I used to run upstairs all the time,’ sixtysomething Marcus Berkmann recalls wistfully, as, midway through life’s journey, he wakes to find himself in a dark wood

A bird’s-eye view: Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, reviewed

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Six astronauts at the International Space Station observe the ravages on Mother Earth, but remain hopeful that mankind will find another parent planet

No laughing matter: accusations of transphobia wrecked Graham Linehan’s life

11 November 2023 9:00 am

The comedian found himself out of work and out of his marriage when he challenged the transgender ideology that to be a man or women is about choosing an identity

The beauty of medieval bestiaries

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Spiders, owls, elephants and dragons appear alongside dog-headed men and tusked women in a wealth of texts explaining the world in the most vivid terms then available

Enemy of the Disaster: Selected Political Writings of Renaud Camus, reviewed

11 November 2023 9:00 am

The French writer does not accept that all incomers to his country can be truly ‘French’, and considers the dramatic change of population an unprecedented disaster

Love and loathing at Harold Wilson’s No. 10

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Even her enemies considered Marcia Williams the prime minister’s ‘political wife’, and the real force in the Labour party from the mid-1960s to Wilson’s resignation