Books
America’s brutal borstals: The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead, reviewed
Novelists will always be interested in enclosed communities — or the ‘total institution’, as sociologists say. When you separate a…
Kayaking solo from Shetland to the Channel
After kayaking solo in a November storm to a square mile of rock called Eilean a’Chleirich in the Summer Isles…
They just keep rolling along: the astonishing durability of the Rolling Stones
At the end of 1969, teenage Rolling Stones fans reading the new Fab 208 annual could be forgiven for thinking…
Aung San Suu Kyi couldn’t save Burma — but tourism can
My uncle Edward did not like talking about his service in Burma during the second world war. When I asked…
Fun and games: I Am Sovereign, by Nicola Barker, reviewed
In 2017’s Goldsmiths Prize-winning novel H(A)PPY, Nicola Barker strewed pages with multicoloured text. The Cauliflower, her joyful previous offering, employed…
Where would ballet be without Marius Petipa?
Should the man on the Clapham omnibus ever turn his mind to ballet, he is bound to envisage the work…
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The dark side of Whitby: Kate Atkinson’s Big Sky and other crime novels reviewed
Andrew Martin continues his quest to create uniquely interesting crime novels in The Winker (Corsair, £16.99). Lee Jones is a…
Angel or demon? The Carer, by Deborah Moggach, reviewed
You might think The Carer rather an unpromising title, but Deborah Moggach’s book delivers a wickedly witty entertainment. Towards the…
How Klaus Fuchs’s treachery may have averted Armageddon
When Klaus Fuchs started passing atomic secrets to the KGB, he changed the course of world events. Forget about Philby…
Words of war: interviews with the children who survived Hitler’s invasion of Russia
In 1990s Russia, war veterans were a bossy, even aggressive presence, upbraiding people in shops and pushing to the front…
Andreï Makine’s new novel is ‘masterful’
The Siberian-born novelist Andreï Makine has, as we say in the book world, a shedload of French literary bling. He’s…
How to train your husband
Around 25 years ago it became clear that there existed only two groups that could still be bullied by journalists…
It’s time we treated the moon with some respect
At the very back of the eye is a cluster of cells called ipRGCs. They are cells that don’t depend…
All of nature in a village in Norfolk
Walking home from work one day during the half-year I lived in London’s Maida Vale (almost three decades ago now),…
The problem of being, and writing
The venerable Oxford philologist Max Müller held that ‘mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth…
The novel Silicon Valley’s tech moguls won’t be amused to read
Silicon Valley moguls might not find Zed a particularly amusing read. Joanna Kavenna’s latest mindbender features the CEO of a…
The tragic story of Witold Pilecki, whose reports from Auschwitz fell on deaf ears
On 14 October 1942, the 23 Swiss members of the International Committee of the Red Cross met in Geneva to…
Reshuffling ministers annually is no way to govern
‘Annual reshuffles are crazy,’ remarked one of the prime minister’s most trusted advisers in July 1999 as I hovered outside…
Jerusalem’s libraries contain priceless treasures — but almost no one gets to see them
The bearded figure clad in white robes and wandering barefoot through the streets of Jerusalem is not, in fact, the…
Washed up in Istanbul: 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, by Elif Shafak, reviewed
Elif Shafak once described Istanbul as a set of matryoshka dolls: a place where anything was possible. As with much…
Star-crossed lovers: Sweet Sorrow, by David Nicholls, reviewed
The 16-year-old hero of David Nicholls’s fifth novel is ostensibly Everyboy. It is June 1997, the last day at dreary…
At long last love: Live a Little, by Howard Jacobson, reviewed
Towards the end of Live a Little, one of its two main characters says: ‘I’m past the age of waiting…
The magnificence of Elizabethan portraiture
Roy Strong first encountered the portraiture of Elizabeth I and her court while a schoolboy in post-war Edmonton. In the…
Vengeful pygmies
It says almost everything that needs to be said about Niki Savva’s latest book that its original title was Highway…
The glory and the misery of Louis XIV’s France
I was flicking through an old copy of The Spectator the other day, one of the issues containing contributors’ ‘Christmas…
