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It takes a trained ear fully to appreciate Indian music
At George Harrison’s 1971 concert for Bangladesh, awkwardly, the audience applauded after Ravi Shankar and his musicians had paused to…
The defiance of the ‘ghetto girls’ who resisted the Nazis
‘Jewish Resistance in Poland: Women Trample Nazi Soldiers,’ ran a New York headline in late 1942. That autumn, the Nazi…
A Danubian Narnia: Nostalgia, by Mircea Cartarescu, reviewed
Mircea Cartarescu likens his native Romania to a Latin American country stranded in eastern Europe. Certainly, his writing delivers not…
And then there were five: The High House, by Jessie Greengrass, reviewed
In 2009 Margaret Atwood published The Year of the Flood, set in the aftermath of a waterless flood, a flu-like…
What happens next? Gauging the fallout from the pandemic
What just happened? Some 15 months after the pandemic first struck, it’s still horribly unclear, which is perhaps why there…
Waiting for Gödel is over: the reclusive genius emerges from the shadows
The 20th-century Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel did his level best to live in the world as his philosophical hero Gottfried…
A draining experience: Insignificance, by James Clammer, reviewed
Spare a thought for the white van man. It’s not yet nine on a summer’s morning and already Joseph, a…
The empire that sprang from nowhere under the banner of Islam
When the British formed the basis of their empire in the 1600s by acquiring territories in India and North America,…
Brave new virtual world: The Startup Wife, by Tahmima Anam, reviewed
Welcome to Utopia — not an idyllic arcadia but a secretive tech incubator in a Manhattan office block. Here a…
Russian memoirs are prone to a particular form of angst
Perhaps the secret to understanding Russian history lies in its grammar: it lacks a pluperfect tense. In Latin, English and…
The foghorn’s haunting hoot is a sad loss
Halfway through what must count as one of the more esoteric quests, Jennifer Lucy Allan finds herself on a hill…
An impossible guest: Second Place, by Rachel Cusk, reviewed
A great writer must be prepared to risk ridiculousness — not ridicule, although that may follow, but the possibility that…
Bird-brained: Brood, by Jackie Polzin, reviewed
This is not a novel about four chickens of various character — Gloria, Miss Hennepin County, Gam Gam and Darkness…
Poems are the Duracell batteries of language, says Simon Armitage
Ezra Pound in ABC of Reading: ‘Dichten = condensare.’ Meaning poetry is intensification, ‘the most concentrated form of verbal expression’.…
Good luck enjoying eating salmon ever again
‘I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by cat videos,’ begins Henry Mance’s How to Love Animals, winningly.…
The sweet smell of success: the story behind Chanel No 5’s popularity
This is a curious book, by turns profound and whimsical. Karl Schlögel, a professor of Eastern European history at Frankfurt,…
The many contradictions of modern motherhood
There are few certainties in life. Death and taxes are the ones regularly trotted out. However, there is another that…
The stuff of everyday life: Real Estate, by Deborah Levy, reviewed
Real Estate is the third and concluding volume of Deborah Levy’s ground-breaking ‘Living Autobiography’. Fans of Levy’s alluring, highly allusive…
Blindness and betrayal still bedevil Britain’s policy in Ireland
Charles Péguy’s adage that everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics is sharply illustrated by the development of the…
A campus novel with a difference: The Netanyahus, by Joshua Cohen, reviewed
Dr Benzion Netanyahu’s reputation precedes him. ‘A true genius, who also happens to be a major statesman and political hero,’…
A pawn in the Great Game: the sad story of Charles Masson
‘Everyone knows the Alexandria in Egypt,’ writes Edmund Richardson, ‘but there were over a dozen more Alexandrias scattered across Alexander…
Stirling Moss’s charmed life in the fast lane
‘Who do you think you are — Stirling Moss?’ a genially menacing traffic cop would ask a hapless motorway transgressor.…
Out-scooping the men: six women reporters of the second world war
Two war correspondents were hitching a lift towards Paris in August 1944 when a sudden wave of German bombers forced…
Arthur Bryant: monstrous chronicler of Merrie England
If you want to judge how much society has changed, you might do worse than visit a few secondhand bookshops.…
Haunted by the past: Last Days in Cleaver Square, by Patrick McGrath, reviewed
At the risk of encroaching on Spectator Competition territory, what is the least surprising thing for any given narrator in…
