Books
Royalist recipes for surviving the civil war
Halfway through Lady Fanshawe’s Receipt Book Lucy Moore takes a moment to regret the vast tracts of the past that…
Why is America so inhibited about sex toys?
It’s hard not to love a book that starts with its author fearing a police sting while flogging sex toys…
Bryant’s tyrants: Chris Bryant bashes the British aristocracy
I rashly discarded this book’s dustjacket when I received it, and thus saw only the unlettered cover, a faded photograph…
The vibrant tradition of English folk song
After hundreds of densely packed pages on folk song in England — a subject for which I share Steve Roud’s…
A master of Norwegian wood
Ole Thorstensen has been a carpenter for 25 years. A master craftsman, in fact. He is busy working on a…
Writers’ letters: Anthony Trollope
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Mission statement: the importance of a fine British embassy
At first blush this looks like one of those run-of-the-mill coffee-table books published just for the Christmas market — expensively…
From Adonis to Prometheus: the beautiful men of myth
Stephen Fry has had a go at the Greek myths, in a competitively priced hardback, just in time for Christmas.…
What on earth was The Prisoner all about?
Now, if someone were to spray stun gas through the keyhole of my front door, and I were to collapse…
Christmas quiz – The answers
Weird world 1. Cannabis 2. Che Guevara 3. Tesco 4. Asda 5. Beauty and the Beast 6. Georgia 7. France…
Spot the Classical Music – The answers
1. The Planets (Holst) 2. The Nutcracker Suite (Tchaikovsky) 3. Fingal’s Cave (Mendelssohn) 4. Enigma Variations (Elgar) 5. Choral Symphony…
The joy of Japanese puzzles – The answers
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Books of 2017 – reviewed
When we look back at 2017 we will probably remember it as a year of minor issues that turned into…
How cool is your fridge?
Mrs Thatcher once explained that she adored cleaning the fridge because, in a complicated life, it was one of the…
Christmas quiz books galore
There can be few challenges more daunting for the assiduous reviewer than a pile of Christmas ‘gift’ books sitting on…
The short, reckless life of Andrea Dunbar
In her debut novel, Adelle Stripe recounts the brief, defiant life of the playwright Andrea Dunbar. Dunbar was raised on…
Writers’ Letters: Virginia Woolf
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Midwinter murders: the best Christmas thrillers
It’s difficult to keep a crime series going after 11 books but Boris Akunin manages it well in All the…
What will Katie Hopkins do next?
In her memoir Rude, the former Mail Online columnist Katie Hopkins reveals her true self. She does this by accident,…
Bob Dylan is a modern-day Odysseus
‘There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.’…
Love and letters in a Bloomsbury triangle
Dora Carrington (1893–1932) was at the heart of the Bloomsbury story. As an art student, she encountered the love of…
Jesmyn Ward sees dead people
The events of this book take place where the world of the living and the world of the dead rub…
Edward Garnett and his diligent blue pencil
Edward Garnett, radical, pacifist, freethinker, Russophile man of letters, was from the 1890s onwards for many years the pre-eminent fixer…
Fame of Hall
Anne Watson’s book underlines the truth that in order to praise Jørn Utzon, whose architectural vision created the concept of…
Reading Norman Davies’s global history is like wading through porridge
For many of us, life has become global. Areas which were previously tranquil backwaters are now hives of international activity.…
