More from Books
Surprise package: Tackle!, by Jilly Cooper, reviewed
Rupert Campbell-Black (‘still Nirvana to most women’) decides to buy a football club – to the amazement of Rutshire, and no doubt Cooper’s devoted readers
The popularity of ‘Amazing Grace’ owes much to its melody
The song has evolved from Christian hymn to secular anthem for humankind. But the powerful tune we know today was not its original one
The invisible boundaries of everyday life
Maxim Samson investigates cultural or imaginary demarcations around the world, including the International Date Line, America’s Bible Belt and the Jewish eruvim
Nothing satisfies Madonna for very long
Her ‘rebel’ life, as told by Mary Gabriel, has been a frenzied churn of friends, lovers, mentors and collaborators, vital to her for a year or two and then discarded
Seeing the dark in a new light
Even in the deepest mineshaft we’re surrounded by light we can’t see, explains Jacqueline Yallop, drawing on quantum physics to help dispel ordinary night terrors
What convinces Jeremy Corbyn that ‘there is a poet in all of us’?
‘Nobody should ever be afraid of sharing their poetry’, he says, in an anthology co-edited with Len McCluskey. But, judging by his own offering, afraid is what we should be
The horrors of dining with a Roman emperor
Elagabalus’s suffocating party tricks may have been exaggerated, but Domitian’s sinister, death-themed feasts could be seen as a dictator’s flamboyant threat
Mother’s always angry: Jungle House, by Julianne Pachino, reviewed
But who – or what – is Mother? And are her exasperated warnings about ever-present danger exaggerated?
Fast and furious: America Fantastica, by Tim O’Brien, reviewed
As the avalanche of lies issuing from the White House morphs into the pandemic, Covid becomes in an engine of justice in this rollicking satire on Trumpworld
In the dark early 1960s, at least we had the Beatles
The first half of the decade saw towns bulldozed, the Beeching cuts, everyday racism, political scandal and the threat of Armageddon. But there was also Beatlemania…
The hubris of the great airship designers
Rushing to build the world’s largest flying machine was perhaps Britain’s greatest imperial folly, with a disregard for safety measures dooming the R101 to disaster
A strong whiff of goodbyes: The Pole and Other Stories, by J.M. Coetzee, reviewed
‘The cogs are seizing up, the lights are going out.’ As Elizabeth Costello clears her desk in this collection of stories, we feel that Coetzee may be doing the same
Religion provides the rhythm
From the Gospel journeys of Aretha Franklin to the late-life monasticism of Leonard Cohen, the great musical artists of the 20th century were often quasi-religious figures
Sex and the Famous Five
Before drawing tenuous comparisons between Enid Blyton and David Bowie, Nicholas Royle invites us to consider the erotic potential of Timmy the dog
A choice of this year’s gift books
Sporting trivia, the language of cats and the comic genius of Barry Cryer feature among the best of the year’s stocking-fillers
Britney Spears is back with a vengeance
After years of abuse and being reduced to the status of child-robot, the singer is back on track with soaring album sales and a smash-hit memoir
What would life on Mars actually look like?
It would need more than 100 million people to make it viable for a start – living in airlocked, subterranean bases, producing food and oxygen in artificially-lit greenhouses
A history of the onion leaves one crying for more
Mark Kurlansky’s treatment of a vegetable which was domesticated at least 7,000 years ago and on which the world’s cuisines depend feels rushed and inadequate
How sport helped shape the British character
David Horspool connects different sports to our historical experience: cricket with class, golf with property rights, tennis with female emancipation and boxing with ethnicity
When atonal music was original and exciting
Alexander Goehr, the sole survivor of the radical Manchester School of Music in the 1960s, describes turning pre-war European tradition into British cutting edge
No nonsense in the kitchen
The forthright food columnist Rachel Cooke has little patience with faddy eaters, ‘meditative’ kitchen tasks or the craze for Portuguese custard tarts
The last battle: The Future, by Naomi Alderman, reviewed
Sinister preparations for the apocalypse by a few Silicon Valley billionaires must be thwarted in this part-thriller, part-Big Tech critique, part-meditation on doomsday
The horrors of the ‘Upskirt Decade’
Lynn Barber 25 November 2023 9:00 am
The century began as a monstrous time to be famous and female – epitomised by the Tulsa judge who, in 2006, seemed to rule that no woman had a right to privacy in public