More from Books
Ahmad Shah Massoud was Afghanistan’s best hope
Ahmed Shah Massoud was described as ‘the Afghan who won the Cold War’. While famous in France (he was educated…
America sees red: how fury prompted the slide into Trumpism
After leaving college more than two decades ago, Evan Osnos landed a job on the Exponent Telegram, one of two…
Lost to addiction: Loved and Missed, by Susie Boyt, reviewed
Ruth, the narrator of Susie Boyt’s seventh novel, is both the child of a single mother and a single mother…
Barça’s golden age and its ruling triumvirate
Even against our better judgment we tend to imbue our sporting heroes with characteristics they may not possess. This can…
A mighty river with many names: adventures on the Amur
The Amur is the eighth or tenth longest river in the world, depending on whom you believe. The veteran travel…
The view from the Paris bus — an appreciation of everyday life
Many would say the commute was one thing they didn’t miss in lockdown. But when Lauren Elkin was ‘yanked out…
A race against time: A Calling for Charlie Barnes, by Joshua Ferris, reviewed
What is life if not a quest to find one’s calling while massaging the narrative along the way? This question…
A story of women and weaving – a new retelling of the Greek myths
What are myths for? Do they lend meaning and value to this quintessence of dust? Like religion, perhaps they help…
The elusive adventures of Catherine Dior
When Catherine Dior, one of the heroic French Resistance workers captured by the Nazis, came face to face with her…
The year of living decisively: The Turning Point, by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, reviewed
We tend to think of turning points as single moments of change — Saul on the road to Damascus or…
The boys who never grow up: Sad Little Men, by Richard Beard, reviewed
I can’t recall reading an angrier book than this. Richard Beard has written what I hope for his sake is…
Darkness, desolation and disarray in Germany
In Geoffrey Household’s adrenalin-quickening 1939 thriller Rogue Male, a lone English adventurer takes a potshot at Hitler and then runs…
No stone left unturned: The World of Bob Dylan reviewed
In May 2019, the first World of Bob Dylan conference was held in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Why Tulsa? Because Dylan’s archives…
The watery life of the capital
To write about London and its rivers is to enter a crowded literary field. Many aspects of watery life in…
A very British coup: SBS – Silent Warriors reviewed
The vast majority of the British public, and even military historians, have never heard of them. COPPists — a combination…
To the brownstone born: WASPS, by Michael Knox Beran, reviewed
It was only in 1948 that the term WASP was coined — by a Florida folklorist, Stetson Kennedy. Yet White…
Was Josiah Wedgwood really a radical?
No wonder Josiah Wedgwood, the 18th-century master potter, was a darling of the Victorians. From W.E. Gladstone to Samuel Smiles…
A narrow escape in Britain’s most treacherous mountain range
Twenty-five years ago, my cousin Jock, a Scottish priest, rang in shock. Two priest friends, David and Norman, had been…
Like burst balloons after a party: the last paintings of John Hoyland
When the internationally acclaimed abstract painter John Hoyland died in 2011 at the age of 76, a large chunk of…
A glimpse of lost London – before the yuppie invasion
In a 1923 book called Echo de Paris, the writer Laurence Houseman attempted to conjure up in a very slim,…
War between Heaven and Hell: The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox, reviewed
Ursula Le Guin once described speculative fiction as ‘a great heavy sack of stuff, a carrier bag full of wimps…
First love: The Inseparables, by Simone de Beauvoir, reviewed
‘Newly discovered novel’ can be a discouraging phrase. Sure, some writers leave works of extraordinary calibre lurking among their effects…
The men of blood get their comeuppance in Revolutionary France
Colin Jones’s hour-by-hour reconstruction of the fall of Maximilien Robespierre, the French revolutionary most associated with the Terror, is inspired…
The cosmopolitan spirit of the Middle East vanished with the Ottomans
One of the most depressing vignettes in Michael Vatikiotis’s agreeably meandering account of his cosmopolitan family’s experiences in the Near…
The great disrupter: how William of Occam overturned medieval thought
Astonishing where an idea can lead you. You start with something that 800 years hence will sound like it’s being…
