Books
The bias against digital music is more emotional than scientific
It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…
Haunting short stories of fear and frustration
In Nicole Flattery’s Show Them a Good Time (Bloomsbury, £14.99), her female protagonists grapple with abusive relationships, degree courses, difficult…
Beauty on the beach: Isolde, by Irina Odoevtseva, reviewed
France was to blame. Yes, France was most definitely to blame. He was never like this at home. So thinks…
From pets to pests: cats, rabbits and now raccoons
I was shocked some years ago to discover, as I scratched bites on my ankles on holiday on Maui, that…
Harper Lee’s battle wasn’t with writer’s block but the whisky bottle
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains one of the most beloved American novels of all time. Famously, Lee never…
A novel about depression that doesn’t depress: Starling Days, by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, reviewed
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan has achieved that rare feat, in her second novel Starling Days, of writing a convincing novel about…
Solving the mystery of my mother’s kidnap
At first glance, Laura Cumming’s memoir On Chapel Sands begins with what appears to be a happy ending. On an…
Creatures of the night: why do we find them irresistible?
When it was recently announced that Robert Pattinson, who played the vampire Edward Cullen in the Twilight films, had secured…
Desperate souls: Travellers, by Helon Habila, reviewed
Death by water haunts the stories of Africans in Europe that flow through this fourth novel by Helon Habila. From…
A drag army in waiting: This Brutal House, by Niven Govinden, reviewed
Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set in the demi-monde of the New York vogue ball. This is an organised,…
For a passionate ecologist, Barry Lopez burns a lot of oil
It is more than a generation since the appearance of Barry Lopez’s classic Arctic Dreams. That book’s effortless integration of…
From bibliomania to kleptomania: the serious crimes of book lovers
In the spring of 1998, Rolling Stones fans in Germany were disappointed to hear that the band had been forced…
The Kan-do spirit: Under Red Skies, by Karoline Kan, reviewed
The defining feature of Chinese millennials is not Instagram, avocado on toast or propertylessness. Born in the early years of…
Fluttering to extinction: the tragedy of Britain’s butterflies
In 1979, despite the best efforts of scientists for more than a century, a butterfly called the British Large Blue…
Getting to grips with rocket science
Now that we are stupidly rendering Earth almost entirely uninhabitable by many species including our own (through overcrowding, failing political…
The free-spirited sisters who galvanised the Bloomsbury Group
It was high time we had a proper look at the four beautiful, original Olivier sisters. Hitherto, with one exception,…
History is made from ideas — but are ideas becoming history?
Wallace Stevens called it ‘the necessary angel’. Ted Hughes thought it ‘the most essential bit of machinery we have if…
Polari, the secret gay argot, is making a surprising comeback
Imagine you’re a gay man living in the year 1950. Not unnaturally, you would like to meet another gay man.…
An education in love: City of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert, reviewed
One of the chief regrets of book-loving women of my age — and a surprising number of men — is…
The snake-oil salesmen who prey on schizophrenics
Schizophrenia is the psychiatric illness about which the most misconceptions abound. It’s not so much the ‘negative’ symptoms that cause…
The sinister strains of English folk music
With public life increasingly a din of personalised ringtones and phone chatter, we crave silence. Acoustic ecologists speak of ‘ear…
Pigeons are plucky and loyal — so don’t go poisoning them in the park
Growing up as a rootless army brat in bases home and abroad, I would listen in appalled delight to my…
Entertaining Iris Murdoch – for months on end
If you know your Peter Conradi from your Peter J. Conradi, you’ll also know that the former is foreign editor…
Haunting and hallucinatory: hospital poems from Hugo Williams
Hugo Williams’s wryly candid reports from the front lines of sex and family life are a perennial delight. Often timeless,…
How does today’s world compare with Orwell’s nightmare vision?
Apart from a passionate relationship with the common toad, what do George Orwell and David Attenborough have in common? H.G.…
