Books
Lucy Mangan has enough comic energy to power the National Grid
After three hot-water-bottle-warmed evenings of highly satisfying bedtime reading, I can confirm that, even in a world where Francis Spufford’s…
Our gallant second world war pigeons have been unjustly ridiculed
Operation Columba was one of the most secretive arms of British Intelligence during the second world war. Between April 1941…
The Maigret novels are perfect for the train. Just don’t let their cynicism blight your view of your fellow passengers
Donald E. Westlake wrote crime books that were funny, light and intricate. Help I Am Being Held Prisoner (Hard Case…
Was Ada Lovelace the true founder of Silicon Valley?
It’s more than 160 years since the death of the computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage’s ‘enchantress of numbers’ and…
Napoleon’s dazzling victories invited a devastating backlash
On 20 July 1805, just three months before the battle of Trafalgar destroyed a combined French and Spanish fleet, the…
Thomas Paine: spendthrift, scrounger and polemicist of genius
‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ Ronald Reagan made this most unconservative of lines…
Why I now find listening to Beethoven nauseating
Stephen Bernard has led an institutionalised life. Behind the doors of the church presbytery, at public school, on hospital wards…
The CIA, the Vietnam deserters and the aptly named Operation Chaos
‘Keep my name out of it’, was the fairly standard reply when Matthew Sweet started researching the story of the…
Only an idiot would choose to live at any other time than the present
Steven Pinker’s new book is a characteristically fluent, decisive and data-rich demonstration of why, given the chance to live at…
The spectacular suicide mission of the world’s greatest battleship
In April 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato — the largest and heaviest in history — embarked upon a suicide mission.…
Jessie Greengrass’s Sight is unashamedly philosophical
The precarious stasis of late pregnancy offers the narrator of Jessie Greengrass’s exceptional first novel a space — albeit an…
The miseries of diplomatic life: heat, bedbugs and endless cocktail parties
The arrival at a new foreign posting for a junior diplomat’s wife in the first half of the last century…
Every day is mother’s day for writers: most have strong feelings about their mothers, though not always of love
You attempt to write a review with a stiff dose of objectivity, but it’s hard not to start with a…
Shadows of the past are ominously present in a trio of memorable first novels
The Shangri-Las’ song ‘Past, Present and Future’ divides a life into three, Beethoven-underpinned phases: before, during and after. Each section…
Doris Lessing: from champion of free love to frump with a bun
‘I am interested only in stretching myself, in living as fully as I can.’ Lara Feigel begins her thoughtful book…
Biography is a thoroughly reprehensible genre
I saw a biopic about Morecambe and Wise recently. The actors impersonating the comedians were not a patch on the…
From Louis XIV to the Shah of Iran: celebrities under the surgeon’s knife
Powerful memoirs by such eloquent doctors as Oliver Sacks, Atul Gawande, Henry Marsh, Gabriel Weston and Paul Kalanithi have whipped…
Be a spy like me, Charlotte Bingham’s father advises
That there’s a direct correlation between sex and spying is probably Ian Fleming’s fault. Hard to think of Bond without…
How a 14th-century Arab thinker influenced Ronald Reagan’s fiscal policy
At a press conference in October 1981, Ronald Reagan quoted Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) in support of what is known…
Dying buddleias on railway lines are what excite the new nature writer
A parliament of owls. A gaggle of geese. A convocation of eagles. But what is the generic term for the…
You deserve a prize if you manage to finish Jim Crace’s latest novel
This remorselessly slow-moving, hazily allegorical drama about ageing and xenophobia is Jim Crace’s 12th book, and the first to appear…
Alastair Campbell’s mix of football and terrorism makes for an accomplished thriller
Alastair Campbell is a man of many parts. Journalist, spin doctor extraordinaire, diarist and now novelist. For this, his third…
Debussy: the musical genius who erupted out of nowhere
At the end of his study of Debussy, Stephen Walsh makes the startling, but probably accurate, claim that musical revolutionaries…
Laura Freeman reads her way out of anorexia
It is hard to be honest about anorexia. The illness breeds deceit and distortion: ‘It thrives on looking-glass logic. It…
Is Tegucigalpa the crime capital of the world?
The Spanish journalist Alberto Arce worked for Associated Press in Honduras in 2012 and 2013. After a year, he says:…
