Books
Has Ann Quin’s time come at last?
Like A Fiery Elephant, my biography of the experimental novelist B.S. Johnson, contains one particularly careless sentence: the one where…
Did the reprisals following the Indian mutiny seal Britain’s fate in the subcontinent?
Many and various are the things one finds in Kentish pubs (I’m told); but few could top the sepoy’s skull…
Never had it so good: British novelists in the 1980s
In 1990, the BBC’s adaptation of David Lodge’s culture-clash novel Nice Work won an award at a glitzy soirée in…
My ex-lover’s T-shirt can join the other tragic tat in the Museum of Broken Relationships
I loved a man. But our affair was nasty, brutish and short. Copious weeping was my un-tart retort. All that’s…
What America needs is another Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt isn’t as popular as he once was. When Barack Obama won the 2008 election, he let it…
How Joseph Lister transformed surgery from butchery to a healing art
Every operation starts the same way. Chlorhexidine scrubbed under nails, lathered over wet hands, palm-to-palm, fingers interlaced, thumbs, wrists, forearms.…
The thrill of living dangerously inspires the latest first novels
Here come three novels marketed as debuts but written by authors with some sort of previous, be it in short…
Peter Carey’s latest novel is a merciless excavation of Australian history
More than 25 years ago, Peter Carey co-wrote one of the most audacious road movies ever made, Wim Wenders’s Until…
Did the fabled Phoenicians ever actually exist?
So the Phoenicians never existed. Herodotus, that unreliable old fibber, made it all up in the Histories. Is this really…
What do Walt Whitman, Jackson Pollock and Jimi Hendrix have in common?
On 3 September 1968, Allen Ginsberg appeared on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. Buckley exposed Ginsberg’s politics as fatuous —…
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house of horrors on the prairies
In 1932, the Daily Plainsman of Huron, South Dakota, ran a feature about a local woman convalescing in hospital. Grace…
Six of the best short story collections
While the short story is currently under-going one of its periods of robust, if not rude, health, its two dominant…
How could anyone possibly want a Roundhead ancestor?
The late Michael Foot used to say that the first thing he needed to know about a new acquaintance was,…
Photographing the extraordinary ordinariness of 1950s America
The career of the photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank stands in direct antithesis to the characteristics of his native Switzerland.…
Nan Shepherd’s lonely uphill struggle
‘It’s a grand thing to get leave to live’, perhaps the most famous line Nan Shepherd wrote, is carved in…
Describing the indescribable: news from the Western Front
At the close of the 1970s, I found a selection of postcards in an antique shop which had been sent…
It’s time to rehabilitate Ulysses S. Grant — scorned hero of the Civil War
Last year, more than 6,000,000 people visited the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. By contrast, barely 80,000 went to General…
The best way to see India — by train
‘I went to a restaurant the other day called Taste of the Raj. The waiter hit me with a stick…
Spot the classical music
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The history of the Bank of England would make a marvellous musical
Hamilton, created by the remarkable Lin-Manuel Miranda, has brought the financial musical to the London stage: a serious biography of…
The hopes and fears of Bethlehem
Before a certain baby was born there, Bethlehem was famous for its sweet water. Shepherd boys like the young David,…
What makes a semi-police state happy?
This charming collection of individual photographic portraits of Bhutanese citizens intentionally highlights the two central features of the kingdom today:…
Anthologies to bring comfort and joy
John Julius Norwich loves Christmas dearly. ‘I just wish it didn’t come round about every three months,’ he says. I…
Did a vodka ban precipitate the Russian Revolution?
It’s one of the more mysterious features of human history that people of every era and in almost every place…
True, dogged likenesses
There are currently 151,000,000 photos on Instagram tagged #Dog which is 14,000,000 more than those tagged #Cat. The enormous number…
