How does David Sedaris get away with saying the unsayable?
These aren’t diaries in the sense that Chips Channon kept diaries, or Samuel Pepys. They aren’t diaries at all, beyond…
We’ve embraced William Blake without having any idea of what he was on about
Whose were those feet in ancient time that walked upon England’s mountains green? That William Blake assumed his readers were…
Stealing the story: A Lonely Man, by Chris Power, reviewed
Robert Prowe has writer’s block. An Englishman reaching middle age, he lives in Berlin with his Swedish wife and their…
What does ownership of land really mean?
At the end of the last century, Simon Winchester bought 123 acres of wooded mountainside in the hamlet of Wassaic,…
Euthanasia sitcom: What Are You Going Through, by Sigrid Nunez, reviewed
What Are You Going Through is both brilliant and mercifully brief. Weighing in at 200-odd pages, it can be read…
A story without redemption: The Lying Life of Adults, by Elena Ferrante, reviewed
‘I don’t at all hate lies,’ Elena Ferrante explained in Frantumaglia, her manifesto for authorial anonymity. ‘I find them useful…
Good biographers make the best companions
Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…
Excess and incest were meat and drink to the Byrons
Excess, incest and marital misery were in the blood. Frances Wilson uncovers several generations of infamous Byrons
Could Leslie Jamison please stop sitting on the fence?
Leslie Jamison is creating quite a stir in America. Her first collection of essays, The Empathy Exams, went straight to…
Fame made Gabriel García Márquez a pedantic bore
Gerald Martin’s titanic biography of 2010, Gabriel García Márquez: A Life, was the product of 17 years of research and…
Germaine Greer continues to shock and awe
There is an African bird called the ox-pecker with which Germaine Greer, conversant as she is with the natural world,…
The perfect guide to a book everyone should read
‘The Divine Comedy is a book that everyone ought to read,’ according to Jorge Luis Borges, and every Italian has…
The wit and wisdom of Dr Johnson is still of benefit to us all
The most irritating of recent publishing trends must be the literary self-help guide, and Henry Hitchings’s contribution to the genre…
The disappearing acts of Joseph Gray, master of military camouflage
On a night in Paris in 1914, Gertrude Stein was walking with Picasso when the first camouflaged trucks passed by.…
Two enquiring minds
Samuel Pepys, wrote John Evelyn, was ‘universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things’ and ‘skilled in music’. John Evelyn,…
Benjamin Franklin: from man about town to man on the run
Just who was Benjamin Franklin? Apart, that is, from journalist, statesman, diplomat, founding father of the United States, inventor of…
George and Martha Washington were an odd first First Couple
Frances Wilson on America’s likeable, if unlikely, first First Couple
What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?
What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The…
Rain, shine and the human imagination — from Adam and Eve to David Hockney
‘Pray don’t talk to me about the weather, Mr Worthing,’ pleads Gwendolen in The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘Whenever people…
Love nest or den of iniquity? Cliveden has always been shrouded in mystery and scandal
Well, you can’t say he wasn’t warned. Swimming pools, Nancy Astor told her son, Bill, were ‘disgustin’. I don’t trust…
Francis Barber: reluctant member of Dr Johnson’s mad ménage
We know a great deal about Samuel Johnson and virtually nothing about his Jamaican servant, Francis Barber. The few facts…
When Rex met Edith: a meeting of minds in interwar England
Rex Whistler — this book’s ‘bright young thing’ — was an artist of the 1920s and 1930s, and Edith Olivier,…
Muriel and Nellie: two radical Christians build Jerusalem in London’s East End
This is the tale of Muriel Lester, once famous pacifist and social reformer, and Nellie Dowell, her invisible friend. Nellie…
