Books
A shortage of Nigels and other calamities: humorous stocking-fillers
Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Stuart Heritage and Rob Orchard, among others, explore the mysteries and frustrations of modern life
A post-Brexit entertainment: The Proof of My Innocence, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
A satire on radical economic libertarianism combines with a cosy Cotswold murder mystery in an ingenious series of stories within stories
We need to learn to pray again
God is real, Rod Dreher insists, and we’re born to be in communion with him. But the focus and mental commitment that prayer requires are impossible if we’re forever doom-scrolling
Surviving an abusive mother-daughter relationship
In a dialogue with her younger self, the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis tries to make sense of her traumatic upbringing at the hands of a repressive, coercive mother
The chilly charm of Clarissa Eden
Glamorous, enigmatic and well read, Anthony Eden’s wife was a discreet but unmistakable influence in Downing Street in the mid-1950s
A century of Hollywood’s spectacular flops
From D.W. Griffiths’s 1916 epic Intolerance to Tom Hooper’s hilariously misjudged Cats, 26 films provide cautionary examples of mega-budget hubris
The boundless curiosity of Oliver Sacks
The neurologist’s diverse interests – from colour blindness to cephalopods – are strikingly evident in letters to family, friends and patients, as well as his unfailing courtesy and compassion
Is it time for Jordan Peterson to declare his spiritual allegiance?
In an outstanding study of the Old Testament, Peterson teases out the inner meaning of one story after another. But though in effect signed up to Christian metaphysics, his beliefs are a mystery
What will the cities of the future look like?
Will they be subterranean, to escape extreme heat; or float in the sky, to avoid overcrowding; or abolish streets entirely, like the Line, now under construction in Saudi Arabia?
Blooming marvellous: the year’s best gardening books
Subjects include Catesby’s Natural History, London’s lost green spaces, planting for colour in borders and the complexity of a garden’s ecology38
The fresh hell of Dorothy Parker’s Hollywood
Though well paid as a screenwriter, Parker lampooned Hollywood’s moguls, dubbing MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Merde as she slipped further into alcoholism
Who would be a goalkeeper?
There’s a whiff of hauteur in Robert McCrum’s history of the penalty kick – his great-grandfather’s brainchild of 1891, which proved such a momentous change to football
A quest for retribution: Fire, by John Boyne, reviewed
Freya, a respected consultant in a burns unit, is on a secret mission to destroy as many young boys’ lives as possible, having been raped by teenagers on holiday in Cornwall at the age of 12
South Asia in a time of the breaking of nations
Avinash Paliwal’s gripping tale of espionage opens in 1949, with newly independent India, Pakistan and Burma racked by rivalries in one of the most intricately partitioned areas on Earth
The ambassador’s daughter bent on betrayal
When the young Martha Dodd arrived at the American embassy in Berlin in 1933 she cared nothing about politics. By the time she left four years later, she was a committed Soviet spy
Seeds of hope in the siege of Leningrad
A Russian biologist’s dream of creating the world’s first seed bank is thwarted by Stalin’s paranoia and the Nazi invasion. But the pioneering project remains a potent symbol of hope
Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty
Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all
The shame of being an alcoholic mother
Julia Hamilton and her daughter Arabella Byrne share their experiences of an addiction that seemed ‘baked into them like a curse’, and the special stigma they felt attached to them
The agonies of adolescence: The Party, by Tessa Hadley, reviewed
In post-war Bristol, two sisters fall in with a group of arrogant young men and soon feel themselves painfully inferior
‘Life was good, very good, almost too good’ – Wallis Simpson’s year in China
Arriving in Shanghai in the summer of 1924, the elegant 28-year-old embarked on a busy but harmless life of pleasure which would later be cast as a wild debauch
Kate Bush – always quite hippy, dippy, ‘out there’
With Bush, the unexpected is about the only certainty, having the bravado to do what she wants rather than pandering to the public’s longing for hits
‘If you steal this book I’ll beat your brains out’
Curses on the book thief from Latin and Old English sources range from the venomous to the sadistic to the mind-twistingly gruesome
Stalemate over Taiwan is the best we can hope for
A good outcome is the tacit recognition on all sides that we currently lack the means to solve this intractable problem, says the former diplomat Kerry Brown
Playing Monopoly is not such a trivial pursuit
Games are politics you can touch, says Tim Clare, and a well-designed boardgame can provide a critical experience of society’s systems
The spy who came back from retirement: Karla’s Choice, by Nick Harkaway, reviewed
Given a new lease of life by John le Carré’s son, George Smiley gets embroiled in a murky affair involving the Circus’s key Stasi asset and a missing Hungarian literary agent
