More from Books
Sunshine on a plate: the year’s best cookbooks
In the dark days of a terrible winter, Elizabeth David began writing her first book, about Mediterranean food. The timing…
A brutal education: At Night All Blood is Black, by David Diop, reviewed
Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the trenches of the Great War, is consumed by bloodlust, which…
Tortured youths: how childhood misery often makes for genius
Greatness. Genius. Can you bottle it? Is there a formula? Inspired by his Radio 4 series Great Lives, Matthew Parris…
Claire Messud helps us see the familiar with new eyes
The title of this collection of journalism is a problem. Not the Kant’s Little Prussian Head bit, which, though opaque,…
Things mankind was not supposed to know — the dark side of science
One day someone is going to have to write the definitive study of Wikipedia’s influence on letters. What, after all,…
The autistic mind could hold the key to the future
An old, cynical adage holds that ‘if all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. I remembered…
Masculinity in crisis: Men and Apparitions, by Lynne Tillman, reviewed
Masculinity, we are often told, is in crisis. The narrator of Men and Apparitions, Professor Ezekiel (Zeke) Stark, both studies…
Humiliating the IRA was a fatal mistake
It was said that Reginald Maudling, as home secretary, once boarded a plane in Belfast and immediately requested a stiff…
Driven to distraction — the unhappy life of Vivien Eliot
Do you think your mother slept with T.S. Eliot? That was the question I needed to ask the 98-year-old in…
Gardening books for Christmas — reviewed by Ursula Buchan
Dan Pearson is one of the finest of all British garden designers, blessed with sensitivity, a wonderful eye, deep plant…
Universities are supposed to encourage debate, not strangle it
Liberal values are under attack on two flanks. Those of us who think extensive freedom of expression, universal human rights…
The courage of a madman: Maurice Wilson’s doomed assault on Everest
Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all 14 of the planet’s peaks higher than 8,000 metres, is probably the…
From light into darkness: the genius of Goya
The great Spanish artist Francisco Goya was born in Zaragoza in 1746, the son of a gilder whose livelihood was…
A love story — with clothes as heroes
On the weekly ‘opinions’ afternoons, the public would arrive with carefully wrapped parcels holding items to be identified, writes Claire…
The ruthless politics of Pakistan — and the curse of being a Bhutto
Hours after Benazir Bhutto arrived back in Pakistan on 18 October 2007, two bombs exploded near the bullet-proof truck carrying…
Lionel Barber leaves the pink ’un in the pink
As Lionel Barber recounts unrolling his pitch to replace me as editor of the Financial Times to the newspaper’s proprietor…
A literary scoop: the passionate correspondence between R.L. Stevenson and J.M. Barrie
This book has appeared with no fuss or fanfare and yet by any account it is something of a scoop.…
Sybille Bedford — a gifted writer but a monstrous snob
Sybille Bedford died in 2006, just short of 95. She left four novels, a travel book, two volumes of legal…
Gift books for Christmas — reviewed by Marcus Berkmann
We have a fine crop of Christmas gift books this year, so good that some of them actually qualify as…
Where time stands still: a Himalayan pilgrimage
The region of Dolpo in Nepal forms part of a border zone between that country and China in the central…
Comforting brown food from the Domestic Goddess
Nigella Lawson is many things to many people: the perfect hostess, the TV star, the thinking man’s crumpet. To me…
A 13th-century guide to fraud and skulduggery
Eight centuries ago in Turkey, at a gathering of intellectuals, a Muslim sultan insisted that one of his courtiers write…
Short and sweet: Xstabeth, by David Keenan, reviewed
Aneliya, the Russian narrator of David Keenan’s enjoyably weird new novel, is worried about her dad. Tomasz’s modest music career…
Wistful thinking: Mr Wilder & Me, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
Mr Wilder & Me is not in any way a state- of-the-nation novel — and thank goodness. Brilliant as Jonathan…
Demystifying the world of espionage
John le Carré once wrote sadly that he felt ‘shifty’ about his contribution to the glamorisation of the spying business.…
