Books
The most shocking sight in ancient Greece: men in trousers
In his robust new biography of Alcibiades, David Stuttard describes how the mercurial Greek general shocked his contemporaries by adopting…
Hernando Columbus deserves to be as famous as his father, Christopher
On 9 May 1502, a young Spaniard joined the fleet setting sail for the newly discovered Americas. The boy, Hernando,…
The Wallis Simpson I knew – by Nicky Haslam
One would have thought this particular can of worms might, after nearly 80 years, be well past its sell-by date.…
We still live in the age of dinosaurs
The age of dinosaurs is a perennial favourite on any time traveller’s wishlist. Even though we’re technically still in it…
I want Lorrie Moore to be my BFF
Is there anything more depressing than the prospect of reading a writer’s collected essays, journalism and occasional pieces? Most of…
The Chernobyl catastrophe was a foregone conclusion
In the early days of the atomic age, Soviet students debated whether it was nobler to become a physicist or…
Northern, posh and Brummie are the only accents we recognise
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Rab C. Nesbitt excepted, it has become quite difficult to infer much from people’s appearance. In these…
Fifty-one hours in Dr Johnson’s rumbustious company
When a man is tired of Samuel Johnson, he’s tired of life. James Boswell intended his biography of Dr Johnson,…
Enduring life under Chairman Mao
Rao Pingru is 94, and a born storyteller. His gripping graphic narrative weaves in and out of the violent, disruptive…
The songs my father’s mistress taught me ignited my love of France
When John Julius Norwich was a boy, his father was British ambassador in Paris.School holidays were spent in the exceptionally…
The best single-volume history of the Great War yet written
The historiography of the Great War is stupendous, the effects of the conflict being so far-reaching that even today historians…
The splendour and squalor surrounding the Sun King
The château at Versailles remained the grandest palace in the whole of Europe from the moment that Louis XIV established…
Zen tales and flights of fancy: Patient X reviewed
The target audience for David Peace’s new novel appears almost defiantly niche. Certainly, any readers in the embarrassing position of…
Root and branch: Richard Powers is determined to save the world’s trees
This is a novel about trees, written in the shape of a tree (eight introductory background chapters, called ‘Roots’; a…
Knickerbocker glories: feminism, fashion and the bicycle
One September day the 16-year-old Tessie Reynolds got on her bike. In a homemade suit, she pedalled from London to…
The ordeal of being married (twice) to John Bellany
Misery memoirs are in vogue. There is much misery in this harrowing account of married life with John Bellany (1942–2013)…
The futile gang wars of New York
I’ve interviewed a lot of rappers over the years and always feel a little grimy when I find myself nudging…
The long arm of the Russian super mafia
Mark Galeotti’s study of Russian organised crime, the product of three decades of academic research and consultancy work, is more…
Couldn’t Diana Evans’s fretful couples just shut up and deal with it?
My husband started reading Diana Evans’s third novel, Ordinary People, the day after I’d finished it. Three days later, I…
The misery of policing the US–Mexico border
Francisco Cantú’s mother is surprised when he announces he’s joining the Border Patrol and going to work in the Arizona…
Who needs Jordan Petersen when we have Ferdinand Mount?
You will by now doubtless be familiar with the University of Toronto academic Jordan Peterson. He’s the unlikely YouTube star…
The London painters that conquered the world
This is an important, authoritative work of art criticism that recognises schools of painters, yet displays the superior distinctions of…
The young Descartes: I fought, therefore I thought
Descartes is most generally known these days for being the guy who was sure he existed because he was thinking.…
Leaving Mangoland
When Donald Trump was elected President in 2016, irascible US comedian Lewis Black declared angrily that, thanks to that event,…
Arlott and Swanton — the Disraeli and Gladstone of cricket?
Francis Wheen 5 May 2018 9:00 am
E.W. Swanton’s first published article appeared in All Sports Weekly in July 1926, soon after his 19th birthday. Thence, swiftly,…