Books
Haunted by a black cat: Earwig, by Brian Catling, reviewed
Genuinely surrealist novels are as rare as hen’s teeth. They are a different form from the magic realist, the absurdist,…
How the Lyons Corner House became a haven for the single working woman
In Whitechapel, in the mid 19th century, rolling and selling cigars was a way for a newly arrived immigrant to…
Homage to Clement and La Frenais, the writing duo who transformed British comedy
Ray Galton and Alan Simpson remain pre-eminent as writers of television comedy, but their closest rivals Dick Clement and Ian…
In praise of cultural elitism
At present we have a series of ‘culture wars’ over a wide range of issues — race, gender, sexuality, power…
The best of journeys: Justin Marozzi’s monumental trek through the history of the Muslim world
This impressively clever, careful, and often beautiful book is the best sort of journey. It takes us through 15 cities…
Rushdie at his best – Quichotte reviewed
It’s hard to get your head around Salman Rushdie’s latest novel Quichotte, which has been shortlisted for the Booker. It’s…
Welcome back to Gilead: Margaret Atwood’s triumphant reclaiming of her work
‘Penises,’ Aunt Lydia muses, ‘them again.’ Penises are always causing trouble, even in the God-fearing dystopian state of Gilead. The…
The great American trauma in minute detail
Why, I asked some months back in these pages, do the protagonists in American fiction these days seem so lost?…
Rod Liddle on Brexit: The Great Betrayal reviewed
Rod Liddle has taken a huge gamble with this book. It could be out of date very soon. The book’s…
Two faces of a single calamity: how the war against inequality backfired dramatically
In 2015, Daniel Markovits, a professor at Yale Law School, delivered a commencement address to that year’s graduating class in…
The tsunami of stuff we have and want is based on culture and economics
In 1993, the photographer Peter Menzel travelled across the globe to capture our material world. In each country, he asked…
Hitler’s legacy: two books examine different aspects of the horror that was Germany, 1945
Two new books offer very different takes on the utter ruination of Germany in 1945. Each in its own way…
What to do to grinning do-gooders
In the 1860s, Australian colonies adopted, virtually unaltered, the English Companies Act 1862. Despite initial distrust of this new corporate…
No one held Susan Sontag in higher esteem than she did: Her Life reviewed
Towards the end of this tale of imperial intellectual expansion, Susan Sontag’s publicist goes to visit his shrink and, dealing…
A thoroughly modern medieval romance
The novelist and essayist James Meek’s confident new medieval romance is conducted in brief passages separated out by three icons,…
There’s no place quite like Excellent Essex
Those who think Essex is boring, or a human waste bin into which only the most meretricious people find themselves…
The Lost Girls of World War II – a tribute
It is to Peter Quennell in his memoir The Wanton Chase that D.J. Taylor owes his concept of wartime London’s…
A New York state of mind – Doxology reviewed
Doxology covers five decades and a spacious 400 pages, with all the subplots and digressions you would expect of a…
A page-turning work of well-researched history: The Mountbattens reviewed
He would want to be remembered as the debonair war hero who delivered Indian independence and became the royal family’s…
Edna O’Brien’s heroic tribute to the girls kidnapped by Boko Haram: Girl reviewed
This novel is strikingly brave in two ways: first, in the fortitude of its writer, the redoubtable Edna O’Brien, who,…
One insider’s view of the thorny subject of immigration
Probably this happens to every generation: the moment when you can’t believe what’s going on; when events seem too preposterous…
William Dalrymple has nailed the East India Company for what it was: ‘a supreme act of corporate violence’
A boardful of company directors are summoned to explain themselves to a Whitehall select committee. The Bank of England has…
Tobias Jones finds in Italian football hooliganism a mirror image of Italy itself
Ultras (Italian football hooligans) initially evolved along the same lines as their more infamous English counterparts, emerging in the 1960s…
20th-century assassins – How to be a Dictator reviewed
Frank Dikötter has written a very lively and concise analysis of the techniques and personalities of eight 20th-century dictators: Mussolini,…
What made Lucian Freud so irresistible to women?
Amedeo Modigliani thought Nina Hamnett, muse, painter, memoirist, had ‘the best tits in Europe’. She fell 40 feet from a…
