Books
In the dark early 1960s, at least we had the Beatles
The first half of the decade saw towns bulldozed, the Beeching cuts, everyday racism, political scandal and the threat of Armageddon. But there was also Beatlemania…
The hubris of the great airship designers
Rushing to build the world’s largest flying machine was perhaps Britain’s greatest imperial folly, with a disregard for safety measures dooming the R101 to disaster
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
Religion provides the rhythm
From the Gospel journeys of Aretha Franklin to the late-life monasticism of Leonard Cohen, the great musical artists of the 20th century were often quasi-religious figures
Sex and the Famous Five
Before drawing tenuous comparisons between Enid Blyton and David Bowie, Nicholas Royle invites us to consider the erotic potential of Timmy the dog
The splendour and squalor of Venice
In his celebration of Venetian art, Martin Gayford is keenly alert to the city’s spectacular contradictions
A choice of this year’s gift books
Sporting trivia, the language of cats and the comic genius of Barry Cryer feature among the best of the year’s stocking-fillers
Britney Spears is back with a vengeance
After years of abuse and being reduced to the status of child-robot, the singer is back on track with soaring album sales and a smash-hit memoir
What would life on Mars actually look like?
It would need more than 100 million people to make it viable for a start – living in airlocked, subterranean bases, producing food and oxygen in artificially-lit greenhouses
A history of the onion leaves one crying for more
Mark Kurlansky’s treatment of a vegetable which was domesticated at least 7,000 years ago and on which the world’s cuisines depend feels rushed and inadequate
How sport helped shape the British character
David Horspool connects different sports to our historical experience: cricket with class, golf with property rights, tennis with female emancipation and boxing with ethnicity
When atonal music was original and exciting
Alexander Goehr, the sole survivor of the radical Manchester School of Music in the 1960s, describes turning pre-war European tradition into British cutting edge
The British Empire’s latest crime – to have ended the Enlightenment
Richard Whatmore sees trade and colonisation in the 19th century as the great threat to Enlightenment ideals, and British imperialism as an unremitting force of darkness
No nonsense in the kitchen
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
The horrors of the ‘Upskirt Decade’
Lynn Barber 25 November 2023 9:00 am
The century began as a monstrous time to be famous and female – epitomised by the Tulsa judge who, in 2006, seemed to rule that no woman had a right to privacy in public