We’re all caught in the insurance trap
In they pour, one after another, cheerily thudding on to the doormat: ‘Thank you for insuring with us again! Now,…
Is it really too much to ask students to read children’s books?
The Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate recently claimed that students are struggling to read long books. Depressingly, he’s right. I…
Bring back the stiffy!
The other day, clearing out boxes, I stumbled on a sheaf of invitations from childhood. Decorated with trains and fairies,…
More curious canine incidents: Dogs and Monsters, by Mark Haddon, reviewed
Mesmerising accounts of dogs feature in these latest stories, including Actaeon’s tragic hounds, St Antony’s comforting mutt and Laika, the husky hurled into space
Why is the government making it harder to get an au pair?
You will have heard, I am sure, of the Conservatives’ recent largesse towards working parents, as their ‘free’ childcare policy…
Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed
Three adolescents reappear in their home town on the Massachusetts coast, having been presumed dead – which is closer to the truth than their families realise
Nostalgia for old, rundown coastal Sussex
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
No happy endings
Traditional fairy tales are transposed to a modern setting and given a thrilling – often terrifying – twist
A dangerous gift: The Weather Woman, by Sally Gardner, reviewed
Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, Gardner’s novel tells the story of young Neva, whose ability to predict the weather nearly ruins her
The torment of mentoring spoilt rich kids
For 20 years of my adult life, I moonlighted as a private tutor. After a full day in the office…
Julius Caesar’s assassins were widely regarded as heroes in Rome
It’s not as if Julius Caesar wasn’t warned about the Ides of March. Somebody thrust a written prediction of the…
Greco-Roman civilisation has dominated ancient history for too long
What have the Akkadians ever done for us? As it turns out, rather a lot, as Philip Matyszak reveals in…
A drag army in waiting: This Brutal House, by Niven Govinden, reviewed
Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set in the demi-monde of the New York vogue ball. This is an organised,…
Is there no end to the retelling of classical myths?
In the past few years there has been a flourishing of literary responses to the Trojan war. To mention a…
Beware the female stalker: Dream Sequence, by Adam Foulds, reviewed
Adam Foulds’s fourth novel, Dream Sequence, is an exquisitely concocted, riveting account of artistic ambition and unrequited love verging on…
The passions of Paulo: Enigma Variations, by André Aciman, reviewed
André Aciman’s 2007 debut novel, Call Me By Your Name, was a sensuous, captivating account of the passionate love a…
Can a paedophilic relationship ever be excused?
Sofka Zinovieff’s new novel, Putney, is an involving, beautifully written, and subtle account of an affair in the 1970s between…
The songs my father’s mistress taught me ignited my love of France
When John Julius Norwich was a boy, his father was British ambassador in Paris.School holidays were spent in the exceptionally…
The Charlie Hebdo attacks form a backdrop to a complicated love triangle in C.K. Stead’s latest novel
There has been much debate recently about what exactly constitutes ‘literary’ fiction. If the term means beguiling, gorgeously crafted novels…
Coming of age in New York
I read this, Meg Rosoff’s first novel for adults (though her previous fiction, aimed at teenagers, is widely enjoyed by…
Catullus, Clodia and the pangs of despised love
Reading Daisy Dunn’s ambitious first book, a biography of the salty (in more ways than one) Roman poet Catullus, it…
A lull in hostilities for Matthew Hervey
Allan Mallinson’s historical series concerning Matthew Hervey, the well-bred, thoughtful soldier, details a world where men are practical and not…
Time-travel, smugglers, arsenic — what’s not to like in Sally Gardner’s novel for teenagers?
Which of us, as an adolescent, did not experience at some point a terrible sense of not belonging? Which of…
Looking for the meaning of life? Come to Constantine Phipps' poetic theme park
A favourite game of mine is to imagine Virgil and Homer today, plying their trade among the supermarkets and office…
Back in the magic land of Narnia
Philip Womack 1 May 2021 9:00 am
C. S. Lewis’s enchanting Chronicles of Narniaseries has, in recent years, come under critical fire. It’s racist, sexist, colonialist; blatant…