A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin
The hare-raising experience that changed my life
When Chloe Dalton adopts an abandoned new-born leveret, she soon finds her domestic routine radically altered
The Crimean War spelt the end of hymns to heroism and glory
Writing from opposite sides, Leo Tolstoy and William Howard Russell exposed the horror of conditions in a quagmire war which seemed to have no meaning
How the Rillington Place murders turned Britain into a nation of ghouls
With titillating newspaper coverage making John Christie’s trial a hot ticket, everyone seemed to want to peep behind the curtains of the house of horror – or even break in
The mystery of female desire deepens
When Gillian Anderson appealed to women to send her their sexual fantasies, she guaranteed strict anonymity – prompting a ‘torrent of unbridled passion from across the world’
When Britannia ceased to rule the waves
The final volume of N.A.M. Rodger’s magisterial history documents the gradual decline of Britain’s naval power as the empire disintegrated
A dark satanic cult: The Third Realm, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed
Knausgaard’s unsettling novel continues to explore previous themes in the series, including the strange phenomenon of the black metal music scene in socially balanced Norway
Starving street urchins sell their sisters in the chaos of Naples, 1944
When the Allies arrived in the city in the wake of the German retreat, they were shocked by the child prostitutes, shady commerce and downright miseria
The flowering of enlightenment under Oliver Cromwell
Far from being a puritanical wasteland, revolutionary Britain saw the foundation of the Oxford Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists who bridged the political divide of the times
Is now the most exciting point in human history?
Since today’s computers can process information beyond human capabilities, we are on a precipice never faced before, says Yuval Noah Harari, in another sweeping narrative
