Books
The vast human cost of the Panama Canal keeps unfolding
There is nothing new about Latin America’s fractious relationship with her northern neighbour. In 1900 the Uruguayan writer José Enrique…
‘Where every vice was permissible’: Graham Greene’s Cuba
Cuba meant a lot to Graham Greene. Behind his writing desk in his flat in Antibes he had a painting…
Bloodbath at Baisakhi: the centenary of the Amritsar massacre
On 10 April 1919, the peppery governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, ordered the immediate arrest of two leaders…
Into oblivion
Moribund for about nine years now, Clive James has released his newest transcription of the Grim Reaper’s call. You might…
How much of the Bible are Christians expected to believe?
In this careful study of the sacred texts of Judaism and Christianity, John Barton, former Oriel and Laing professor of…
While Dutch schools ban birthday cakes, the British pine for the next Bake Off
The Way We Eat Now begins with a single bunch of grapes. The bunch is nothing special to the modern…
The Arabs before Islam: a rich, exotic history
In his first book, published in 1977, Tim Mackintosh-Smith described mentioning the idea of travelling to Yemen while studying Arabic…
Where is the rise of neo-Nazism around Europe leading?
‘Why would anyone write a historical study of it?’ asks Gavriel Rosenfeld about the Fourth Reich at the start of…
Socrates the romantic hero?
If western philosophy is no more than ‘footnotes to Plato’, so, arguably, is the myth of its founding hero, Socrates.…
What makes Kim Jong-il cute — and Barack Obama not?
Ordinarily, I love books that answer questions I’ve never asked, but Simon May’s baffling book has blown my mind. The…
Farewell Bernie Gunther: Metropolis, by Philip Kerr, reviewed
Philip Kerr’s first Bernie Gunther novel, March Violets, was published 30 years ago. From the start, the format was a…
The cruise of a lifetime: Proleterka, by Fleur Jaeggy, reviewed
Near the start of Fleur Jaeggy’s extraordinary novel Proleterka, the unnamed narrator reflects: ‘Children lose interest in their parents when…
Robert A. Heinlein: the ‘giant of SF’ was sexist, racist — and certainly no stylist
Like someone who has bought a first computer, then reads the manual from front to back but never actually gets…
The Lady with the Limp: homage to the one-legged Virginia Hall, SOE’s ‘most dangerous’ agent
‘This seems to be in your rough area. I mean, it contains wooden legs and everything…’ my commissioning editor at…
Unis? Must try harder
‘I’m a revolutionary Marxist, and if you’re not one by the end of semester I haven’t done my job properly,’…
How Diderot’s pleas to end despotism fell on deaf ears in Russia
Denis Diderot (1713–84) is the least commemorated of the philosophes. Calls for his remains to be moved to the Panthéon…
Days of the locust: our continuing battle with an ancient plague
Carried on monsoon winds across the Red Sea, vast swarms of desert locusts have posed a deadly threat to the…
Writing as revenge: Memories of the Future, by Siri Hustvedt, reviewed
Why are people interested in their past? One possible reason is that you can interact with it, recruiting it as…
A Mojave desert mystery: The Other Americans, by Laila Lalami, reviewed
Late one night, on a dimly lit stretch of highway in a small town in the Californian Mojave desert, an…
Why are we so obsessed with Jack the Ripper, but care so little for his victims?
Before she was the subject of true-crime mythologising, Catherine Eddowes made her living from it, selling ballads based on real-life…
The short, happy life of the long playing record
On 19 June 1948, the modern LP was unveiled at a press conference by the Columbia Records president Ted Wallerstein,…
Brexit can be surprisingly thrilling, as Alan Judd’s latest spy novel demonstrates
The long gestation period of Brexit has allowed authors to plan and write and publish novels in time for the…
The Englishman who saved Japan’s cherry blossoms
Between 1639 and 1853, seeds and scions of flowering cherry trees travelled across Japan to Edo (present-day Tokyo). Each came…
How Polynesia came to be inhabited is still one of the world’s great mysteries
Later this month, a boat builder from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia will fly to the Russian city of Sochi to…
Further adventures of a dysfunctional family: Reasons to be Cheerful, by Nina Stibbe, reviewed
My ex-dentist resembled a potato wearing a Patek Phillipe. In those precious moments between the golf course and the cruise…
