Books
Being diagnosed as autistic was the happiest day of my life
It’s easy to forget that until the late 1980s the notion of an autistic person being able to write a…
Religion of peace?
This easy-to-read volume of essays, each originally published in the journal of Catholic culture, Annals Australasia, is an important caveat…
Answers to Spot the book title
Billy Liar, by Keith Waterhouse Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, by John le Carré To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf The…
More juicy gossip from Kenneth ‘Climbing’ Rose
When this second volume of diaries begins in 1979, Kenneth Rose is 54 and well established as the author of…
Who will take on the behemoths of Big Tech?
With Britain having gone through its third general election in four years, the halcyon days of Cleggmania in the 2010…
The Great Barrier Grief — and countless other marine disasters
In the last, wrenching episode of BBC’s Blue Planet 2, there’s a distressing moment when a young Australian diver, expert…
Dave Eggers’s satire on Trump is somewhat heavy-handed: The Captain and the Glory reviewed
A feckless moron is appointed to the captaincy of a ship, despite having no nautical experience. The Captain has a…
Tame family dramas: Christmas in Austin, by Benjamin Markovits, reviewed
My partner’s brother once found himself accidentally locked into his flat on Christmas Day, which meant having to spend it…
Female partisans played a vital role in fighting fascism in Italy — but it was a thankless task
‘I am a woman,’ Ada Gobetti wrote in a clandestine Piedmont newsletter in 1943: An insignificant little woman, who has…
The good sex award goes to Sarah Hall: Sudden Traveller reviewed
Sarah Hall should probably stop publishing short stories for a while to give other writers a chance. If she’s not…
What is the relationship between truth and accuracy? The Lifespan of a Fact reviewed
At the time, I’m sure it all seemed absolutely hilarious. It was in 2012 that W.W. Norton first published The…
Who knew that chemistry could be so entertaining?
Here’s how the element antimony got its name. Once upon a time (according to the 17th-century apothecary Pierre Pomet), a…
Spy who came in from the EU
I read Mr le Carré’s latest spy novel, Agent Running in the Field last weekend, despite everything. What do I…
As English spread over the subcontinent, India lost forever its rich Persianate literary heritage
In the seventh century, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang made an epic journey through the Gobi desert and over the…
Britain’s obsession with boxing is as deep-rooted as its devotion to cricket
Boxing has long been a British obsession, exported successfully to North America, but never widespread on the Continent. Mainland Europeans…
Will Self’s memoir of drug addiction is a masterpiece of black humour
Well, it was always going to be called Will. More than once in this terrifying, terrific book, Will Self refers…
The people’s Prince: even as a teenager the musician charmed everyone he met
Many pop stars are easy to imagine as children, as it’s a profession that doesn’t really reward growing up. Elton…
The first Puritans weren’t so much killjoys as ardent believers in honest living
‘Puritan’ is a term of abuse, and we tend to use it to refer to such figures as the nightmarishly…
Lydia Davis, like an inspirational teacher, tempts her readers into more reading
A good indicator of just how interesting and alluring Lydia Davis’s Essays proved might be my recent credit card statement.…
The Great War was enough to make grown men weep
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo it took a mere six weeks for the diplomats of Europe’s…
James Baldwin’s radicalism was part Marxist, part Christian
Great biographies try to answer questions about the complicated relationship between their subjects’ inner life and outer workings. How did…
When Cartier was the girls’ best friend
The word ‘jewel’ makes the heart beat a little faster. Great jewels have always epitomised beauty, love — illicit or…
The old monster Elton John appears charmingly self-deprecating
I don’t care for Elton John. A cross between Violet Elizabeth Bott and Princess Margaret, his temper tantrums are legendary,…
The exotic Silk Road is now a highway to hell
This engaging book describes the Norwegian author’s travels round the five Central Asian Stans — a region where toponyms still…
Poland was no walkover for the Reich
‘The victor will never be asked if he told the truth,’ Hitler remarked on the eve of invading Poland in…
