More from Books

A Faustian bargain

1 April 2023 9:00 am

Under the much-vaunted new secularism, Muslims were treated as second-class citizens at best - and were often the victims of mass pogroms

Our struggle to concentrate is nothing new

1 April 2023 9:00 am

The buzz of modernity has plagued us since the Industrial Revolution – but even Thoreau tired of practising his ‘habit of attention’ at Walden Pond

Together and apart

1 April 2023 9:00 am

Death permeates these stories, as Nell – a stand-in for Atwood – mourns the loss of her beloved partner Tig

A surreal account of lockdown

1 April 2023 9:00 am

A complex novel explores the ways we try to understand a world that isn’t good or fair or causal or even comprehensible

The relationship between self and singer

1 April 2023 9:00 am

If opera is acting, concealing the self behind a character, where does that leave the singer in the concert hall, caught between ventriloquist and dummy, wonders Ian Bostridge

The chaos of coronations over the centuries

1 April 2023 9:00 am

From the mass panic of William the Conqueror’s to the drunken mayhem of Victoria’s, few coronations have passed off entirely peacefully

No happy endings

1 April 2023 9:00 am

Traditional fairy tales are transposed to a modern setting and given a thrilling – often terrifying – twist

What can we learn of George Eliot through her heroines?

25 March 2023 9:00 am

Eliot guarded her privacy closely, but her novels explore themes of sacrifice and restraint, and her heroines are studies in the impossibility of having it all

Did the sinking of the Blücher in 1940 affect the outcome of the war?

25 March 2023 9:00 am

The answer is, we shall never know – but one Norwegian colonel’s quick decision may have ensured Churchill’s premiership and the success of Dunkirk

Growing old disgracefully

25 March 2023 9:00 am

Five women in their nineties dine together monthly, keeping loneliness at bay with gossip, advice and reminiscence

Out of the depths

25 March 2023 9:00 am

Sexually assaulted as a teenager, Christiana Spens describes her life of perpetual anxiety – until the birth of her son ‘transforms everything’

How hardboiled detective fiction saved James Ellroy

18 March 2023 9:00 am

After his mother’s murder, the teenage Ellroy seemed lost to speed and alcohol – until his discovery of crime writing led to a different addiction

Strange meeting

18 March 2023 9:00 am

When distraught teenage Orla embarks on a secret pilgrimage to her mother’s grave, she meets a ‘mad hairy’ man with miraculous powers

The long journey from Lindisfarne: Cuddy, by Benjamin Myers, reviewed

18 March 2023 9:00 am

St Cuthbert’s body, rescued from the ‘devilish Danes’, is carried for hundreds of years to its eventual shrine in Durham cathedral

The wiliest politician in the Middle East is back – but not in charge

18 March 2023 9:00 am

Benjamin Netanyahu has won a staggering sixth term in office – but his alliance with the disreputable right is inching Israel close to catastrophe

Carry on curate: scenes of modern clerical life

18 March 2023 9:00 am

The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie regales us with stories of mistaken identity, hymns with erotic undertones and an archbishop’s surprising take on Lenten penance

Nothing really matters

18 March 2023 9:00 am

A mathematics professor, who specialises in the idea of nothing, is approached by a would-be Bond villain with a dastardly plan of annihilation

Promises, promises

18 March 2023 9:00 am

But the big ideas seem mainly to consist in acquiring new skills – like boxing and baking – and flexing the imagination muscle

The age-old debate continues: are science and religion compatible?

18 March 2023 9:00 am

Nicholas Spencer insists they are – and his scientific knowledge is impressive. But do his religious arguments carry weight?

Living with the Xingu in deepest Amazonia

11 March 2023 9:00 am

The Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum moves from São Paulo to ‘reforest’ herself in the Amazon, and slowly gains the trust of a wary, isolated tribal people

In the fascist grip

11 March 2023 9:00 am

A French widower’s horror at his elder son’s involvement with the Front National grows ever deeper as violence escalates

The trials of England’s first ambassador to India

11 March 2023 9:00 am

After landing in Surat in 1615, Sir Thomas Roe was studiously ignored, and months passed before he was finally received by the Mughal emperor

What possessed the Duke of Windsor to visit Nazi Germany in 1937?

11 March 2023 9:00 am

Whether it was from hurt, spite or genuine fascist sympathies, his surprise at his family’s response simply confirms his stupidity

Mass poisonings in a small town in Hungary

11 March 2023 9:00 am

When a midwife in Nagyrév started doling out arsenic in 1911, dozens more women followed suit, until the death toll became impossible to ignore

The European influence on modern American art

11 March 2023 9:00 am

New York’s Atelier 17 became a creative hub in the 1940s, where émigré Surrealists shared ideas with artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell