More from Books

The roots of 20th-century German aggression

1 October 2022 9:00 am

It is the contention of Peter Wilson, professor of the history of war at Oxford University and the author of…

Explorer, author, soldier, lover: The Romantic, by William Boyd, reviewed

1 October 2022 9:00 am

William Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the…

A complicated bond: The Best of Friends, by Kamila Shamsie, reviewed

24 September 2022 9:00 am

When I think of Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, I picture a pot boiling on a hob, the water level rising…

Was Nato expansion worth the risk?

24 September 2022 9:00 am

This is an important and topical book. Mary Sarotte traces the difficult course of Russia’s relations with Europe and the…

An empire crumbles: Nights of Plague, by Orhan Pamuk, reviewed

24 September 2022 9:00 am

Welcome to Mingheria, ‘pearl of the Levant’. On a spring day, as the 20th century dawns, you disembark at this…

The ‘delishious’ letters of Lucian Freud

24 September 2022 9:00 am

Love him or loathe him, Lucian Freud was a maverick genius whose life from the off was as singular as…

‘I always made an awkward bow’: John Keats’s poignant farewell

24 September 2022 9:00 am

On Sunday 17 September 1820, John Keats and his travelling companion, the young painter Joseph Severn, set sail for Italy,…

The great deception: The Book of Goose, by Yiyun Li, reviewed

24 September 2022 9:00 am

As introductions go, ‘My name is Agnès, but that is not important’ does not have quite the same confidence as…

James Bond and the Beatles at war for Britain’s soul

17 September 2022 9:00 am

‘Better use your sense,’ advised Bob Dylan: ‘take what you have gathered from coincidence.’ John Higgs is a master of…

An outcast in Xinjiang: The Backstreets, by Perhat Tursun, reviewed

17 September 2022 9:00 am

Like Dostoevsky’s Underground Man, Perhat Tursun’s unnamed protagonist is an outcast. A young Uighur in an increasingly Han city (Urumchi,…

Back on the road: Less is Lost, by Andrew Sean Greer, reviewed

17 September 2022 9:00 am

Get ready for more of Less: Andrew Sean Greer’s hapless novelist is back on the road. First things first: you…

A character assassination of Rudy Giuliani

17 September 2022 9:00 am

Lord help me I love a hatchet job, and you’ll have to too if you want to make it through…

The Index of Prohibited Books makes a fine reading list

17 September 2022 9:00 am

In a classic paradox of bureaucracy, the Index of Forbidden Books only really hit its stride when its original task…

Mad men plotting: The Unfolding, by A.M. Homes, reviewed

17 September 2022 9:00 am

Fifteen years ago, A.M. Homes published The Mistress’s Daughter, an explosive, painful account of how she met her birth mother,…

A translator’s responsibilities are as formidable as a transplant surgeon’s

17 September 2022 9:00 am

When asked what it is we do, translators often resort to metaphors. We liken the act of translation to performing…

Robert Harris's gripping Act of Oblivion is let down by anachronisms

17 September 2022 9:00 am

When Charles II became king of England in 1660, he pardoned most of those who’d committed crimes during the civil…

A single meal in Rome is a lesson in Italian history

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Farmer, restaurateur, critic, foodie activist, traveller (he’s worked in Zimbabwe as well as South Africa), cookery book writer, longtime TV…

A ghoulish afterlife: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, by Shehan Karunatilaka, reviewed

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Ten years ago Shehan Karunatilaka’s first novel, Chinaman, was published and I raved about it, as did many others. Set…

Ballet comes of age with Sergei Diaghilev

10 September 2022 9:00 am

‘What exactly is it you do?’ asked a bamboozled King Alfonso XIII of Spain upon meeting Sergei Diaghilev at a…

A.N. Wilson has many regrets

10 September 2022 9:00 am

‘Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults.’ A.N. Wilson seems, on the surface, to have taken to heart…

Britain’s recent darkest hour: the betrayal of the Chagos Islands

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Philippe Sands’s compelling new book opens in 2018 at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where Liseby Elysé…

The curse of Medusa: Stone Blind, by Natalie Haynes, reviewed

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Natalie Haynes has been compared with Mary Renault, the historical novelist who scandalised readers in the 1950s with her unflinching…

As normal as blueberry pie: Oscar Hammerstein II, through his letters

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Tolstoy or Dostoevsky? Picasso or Matisse? Lennon or McCartney? Impossible to call? No such quandary with Rodgers and Hart and…

Finally, the Sherpas are heroes of their own story

10 September 2022 9:00 am

John Keay has for many years been a key historian and prolific contributor to the romance attaching to the highest…

Scotland’s deer are proving deeply divisive

3 September 2022 9:00 am

On the face of it, a book about a woman stalking one red deer might not sound that exciting. Just…