More from Books
What’s a scribbled signature worth?
In 2002 I was living in Berlin. One day my upstairs neighbour Peter told me he had just returned from…
The tragedy of Lebanon — from safe haven to bankruptcy
Mountains are humanity’s most comforting topographical feature. Wherever you find them you will also find those who have flocked to…
The life cycle of the limpet teaches universal truths
Adam Nicolson is one of our finest writers of non-fiction. He has range — from place and history to literature…
Germany’s post-war recovery was no economic miracle
Lord Macaulay wrote that ‘during the century and a half which followed the Conquest there is, to speak strictly, no…
The power of the translator to break nations
No one ever raised a statue to a translator, disgruntled adepts of that art sometimes complain. I beg to differ,…
She didn’t go quietly: Caroline Norton’s campaign for married women’s rights
When Caroline Sheridan married George Chapple Norton in 1827 she ceased to exist. According to the legal status quo, as…
The man at the heart of punk: the late Pete Shelley recalls his Buzzcocks years
Manchester, in the words of the artist Linder Sterling, is a ‘tiny little world’. Nearly three million people live in…
A matter of life or death: Should We Stay or Shall We Go, by Lionel Shriver, reviewed
Leave or remain? That’s the question hanging like a cartoon sledgehammer over Lionel Shriver’s 17th novel. Although she makes merry…
Richard Dawkins delights in his own invective
The late Derek Ratcliffe, arguably Britain’s greatest naturalist since Charles Darwin, once explained how he cultivated a technique for finding…
The cut-throat business of the secondhand book trade
For almost as long as there have been books, there have been books about books — writers just love to…
Studies in vulnerability: A Shock, by Keith Ridgway, reviewed
Keith Ridgway’s seventh book is a sultry, steamy shock of a novel, not least because nine years ago, despite the…
Liberate yourself from sexual repression the Wilhelm Reich way
When she was 22, Olivia Laing had a sensual epiphany in Brighton. She’d been drawn into a herbalist’s massage parlour…
Experiences of Eton — and the success it rewards
In the summer of 2019, the journalist Anita Sethi was on a train travelling across northern England when she was…
Abandoned by Paul Theroux: the diary of a sad ex-wife who sadly can’t write
When I interviewed Paul Theroux 21 years ago at his home in Hawaii, there were already rumours that his ex-wife…
Salman Rushdie’s self-importance is entirely forgivable
I have the habit, when reading a collection of essays, of not reading them in order. I’m pretty sure I’m…
Is Serena Williams’s fame as a cultural icon eclipsing her tennis?
Serena Williams is not exactly an elegant tennis player — her game is based overwhelmingly on raw power — but…
Life’s a bitch: Animal, by Lisa Taddeo, reviewed
Lisa Taddeo’s debut Three Women was touted as groundbreaking. In reality it was a limp, occasionally overwritten account of the…
Not so dryasdust: how 18th-century antiquarians proved the first ‘modern’ historians
Antiquaries have had a bad press. If mentioned at all today, they are often derided as reclusive pedants poring over…
Leni Riefenstahl is missing: The Dictator’s Muse, by Nigel Farndale, reviewed
Leni Riefenstahl was a film-maker of genius whose name is everlastingly associated with her film about the German chancellor, Triumph…
A lesson in understanding serial killers and child molesters
True crime is having a moment: every day there’s a new documentary, book, podcast, or blockbuster film announced, detailing the…
Return to LA Confidential: Widespread Panic, by James Ellroy, reviewed
Even by James Ellroy’s standards, the narrator of his latest novel is not a man much given to the quiet…
The strangest landscapes are close to home
This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so…
Sweet and sour: Barcelona Dreaming, by Rupert Thomson, reviewed
I’ve never been to Barcelona, but Rupert Thomson makes it feel like an old friend. The hot, airless nights and…
We’ve embraced William Blake without having any idea of what he was on about
Whose were those feet in ancient time that walked upon England’s mountains green? That William Blake assumed his readers were…
A load of oddballs: the eccentricities of past cricketing heroes
For reasons I can’t seem to remember, I have read an awful lot of cricketing histories. The dullest, by a…
