Dickens’s dark side: walking at night helped ease his conscience at killing off characters
James McConnachie discovers that some of the greatest English writers — Chaucer, Blake, Dickens, Wordsworth, Dr Johnson — drew inspiration and even comfort from walking around London late at night
Why the most important years in history were from 1347 to 1352
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
An invisibility cloak? You might just be able to see it on the horizon...
The best books by good writers — and Philip Ball is a very good writer indeed — are sometimes the…
A Labour MP defends the Empire – and only quotes Lenin twice
In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is — you might…
Lawrence of Arabia, meet Curt of Cairo
How do you write a new book about T.E. Lawrence, especially when the man himself described his escapades, or a…
In the heart of darkness, the atom bomb
At the dark heart of this dark book is a startling fact: Joseph Conrad was employed to steam up the…
Hogarth and the harlots of Covent Garden were many things, but they weren't 'bohemians'
It was Hazlitt who said of Hogarth that his pictures ‘breathe a certain close, greasy, tavern air’, and the same…
The Rocks Don’t Lie, by David R. Montgomery - review
James McConnachie finds that theology and geology have been unlikely bedfellows for centuries
What do conductors actually do? Review of 'Inside Conducting' by Christopher Seaman
Conductors love telling stories, especially stories about other conductors, and every chapter of this otherwise determinedly pragmatic book begins with…
