Jesus’s female disciples remain women of mystery
Is there a patron saint of conjecture? Perhaps it is a name known only to Bible scholars, who have rich…
Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House is even better on second reading
Having a saint in the family is dreadful, They’re often absent, either literally or emotionally, and because they’re always thinking…
The upsides of dementia: Forgetfulness can be a blessing
My 91-year-old father-in-law has always had a terror of hospitals. This dates from his time as a Royal Marine when,…
Travelling by train – with Anna Karenina
Any memoir is a form of double-entry book-keeping, in which what has been lost is reckoned against what has been…
Tear-stained ramblings that remained unsent
The deserved success of Shaun Usher’s marvellous anthology Letters of Note has inspired several imitators, and Caroline Atkins’s sparkling collection…
Ill-met by gaslight
What is it about Victorian murders that so grips us? The enduring fascination of Jack the Ripper caught the imagination…
The Wicked Boy is finally redeemed
During the heatwave in the summer of 1895, the Gentlemen v. Players match at Lords Cricket Ground on 8 July…
Sebastian Faulks returns to the psychiatrist’s chair in Where My Heart Used to Beat
There can hardly be two novelists less alike than Sebastian Faulks and Will Self, in style and in content. Faulks…
Shunned, slighted and starving in Sheffield — the Indian immigrants who have become Britain’s untouchables
Novels of such scope and invention are all too rare; unusual, too, are those of real heart, whose characters you…
Why I love undertakers
By looking after the dead, funeral directors allow the living to love and mourn them
Terror Management Studies is a brand new area of research — and it’s not about IS or Boko Haram
This is not a book to be read in solitude. Not for the obvious reason that it’s frightening, but because…
A mad menage — and menagerie - in Mexico: the life of Leonora Carrington in fictional form
Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…
Rugger, Robin Hood and Rupert of the Rhine: enthusiasms of the young Antonia Fraser
Despite it being a well known fact that Antonia Fraser had earthly parents, I had always imagined that she had…
The problem when novelists write short stories
Rose Tremain walks on water. Her historical novels are absolutely marvellous, brilliantly plotted, witty and wise, with some of the…
Care for the dying needs more imagination – and less hospitalisation
‘To die of age is a rare, singular and extra-ordinary death’, wrote Montaigne, ‘and so much less natural than others:…
If you don’t think this novel is practically perfect, I’ll send you a replacement
If there were a harvest festival to honour the bounty of the autumnal book crop, the choir would be in…
Improbable, unconvincing and lazy - Ian McEwan’s latest is unforgivable
The Children Act could hardly be more attuned to the temper of the times, appearing just as our newspapers are…
This thriller is as good as anything by Hilary Mantel
A few years ago, after a lifetime of wearing white shirts through which the straps of my white bra were…
The cruellest present you could give a hated old in-law
It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make drawings of your own 97-year-old mother on her…
My desert island poet
If I had to be marooned on a desert island with a stranger, that stranger would be John Burnside. Not…
No one would want to live in Jane Gardam's stories – but they're an amazing place to visit
In the world of Jane Gardam’s stories the past is always present, solid and often unwanted and always too big,…
Mid-life crisis, 13th-century style
The word delicate is seldom a compliment. I once threw a saucepan of hot soup out of a fifth storey…
Samuel Beckett walks into a nail bar
It isn’t very often that a writer’s work is so striking that you can remember exactly where and when you…
Sometimes one story is worth buying a whole book for. This is one of those times
Any new book by Lorrie Moore is a cause for rejoicing, but her first collection of short stories for 16…
'Where are the happy fictional spinsters?'
This book arose from an argument. Lifelong bookworm Samantha Ellis and her best friend had gone to Brontë country and…
