Lead book review
Is it time for Jordan Peterson to declare his spiritual allegiance?
In an outstanding study of the Old Testament, Peterson teases out the inner meaning of one story after another. But though in effect signed up to Christian metaphysics, his beliefs are a mystery
Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty
Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all
Books of the Year II
Contributors include: Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Stephen Bayley, Justin Marozzi, Andrea Wulf, Hilary Spurling, Boyd Tonkin and Graham Robb
Books of the Year I
Our regular reviewers choose the books they have most enjoyed reading in 2024
Is it up to pop stars to save the planet now?
‘Walking by the banks of the Chao Praya on a breezy evening after a day of intense heat,’ writes Sunil…
The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain
The tabloids in particular stirred up fear and distrust with lurid stories of orgies, prostitution, drug-taking, political corruption, sinister concealment and susceptibility to blackmail
Politics as Ripping Yarns: the breathless brio of Boris Johnson’s memoir
Like a cross between Aeneas and Biggles, our intrepid hero travels the world, endures a thousand ordeals and makes himself father of the world’s greatest city
Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong
The 17th-century Elector of Saxony was notoriously vain and incompetent, and his reckless bid for the Polish crown was disastrous for all concerned
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 SAS explode from the shadows in six days that shook Britain
The siege of the Iranian embassy in London in the spring of 1980 achieved nothing for the terrorists. But the previously reclusive elite army unit soon became the stuff of legend
From ugly duckling into swan – the remarkable transformation of Pamela Digby
The plump teenager who married Randolph Churchill soon turned herself into a ravishing beauty – to become the 20th century’s most influential seductress
The great French painter who had no time for France
Describing himself as the ‘savage from Peru’, Paul Gauguin avoided French society when he could, returning to Polynesia in 1895, where he spent his final years on the island of Hiva Oa
The trivial details about royalty are what really fascinate us
Craig Brown’s focus on specifics that other biographers would consider beneath them brings rich rewards
Introducing Tchaikovsky the merry scamp
Rescuing the composer from his tortured image, Simon Morrison presents him as a sort of Till Eulenspiegel character, laughing and pranking his way through life
Saved from certain death at Auschwitz – by playing the cello
Exploring the relationship between the cello and its player, Kate Kennedy describes how Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s musical gift enabled her to survive not just one but two Nazi death camps
A marriage of radical minds: the creative partnership of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders
How the myth of Paris liberating itself was born
When De Gaulle persuaded Eisenhower to allow the French 2nd armoured division to lead a diversion into the city on 25 August 1944, it was his own political future he was thinking of
The new alliances dedicated to destroying democracy
Despite their diverse ideologies, autocracies in China, Iran, Russia and Latin America are increasingly collaborating to sabotage a rules-based international order
A David and Goliath battle involving a billion-dollar pornography website
Laila Mickelwait appears to wage a one-woman crusade to shut down a major distributor of rape and child abuse videos
Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn
Even the most liberal-minded reader might be surprised by the amount of crack cocaine, LSD, alcohol and casual sex the poet indulged over the course of 50 years
Islands of inspiration: a poet’s life on Shetland
Jen Hadfield is not only spellbound by the moods of the ocean and the hectic weather but by the Shaetlan dialect itself – which ‘struck me immediately as a poetic language’
Shalom Auslander vents his disgust – on his ‘grotesque, vile, foul, ignominious self’
Long derided as ‘feh’ by his Orthodox parents, the American writer admits to being his own hanging judge
Paris is perhaps the greatest character in Balzac’s Human Comedy
The drama of the street is a constant theme, though Balzac himself took most pleasure in the city’s ‘gloomy passages and silent cul-de-sacs between midnight and two in the morning’
A long goodbye to Berlin
Christopher Isherwood’s experiences as a young man in Weimar Germany would be reworked in his autofiction for the rest of his life
Those magnificent men and their stargazing machines
Violet Moller focuses on three 16th-century‘heroes of science’, John Dee, Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and their great libraries and observatories
