Books
Ian Kershaw recounts Europe’s recovery from WWII – have the good times run their course?
When I reviewed the first volume of Sir Ian Kershaw’s wrist-breaking history of the last 100 years of Europe, To…
Self-Help goes mainstream – can Marianne Power survive her own quest?
Is there anyone left who’d still be mortified to have it known that they’d purchased, or maybe even benefited from,…
Lights – stories of the sea, and those whose mission is to save us
The story — or rather, stories — of how the British lighthouses were built has already withstood heavy and repeated…
Helen Parr’s intimate portrait of the Parachute Regiment – Our Boys – captures the essence of modern Britain
On the night of 13 June 1982, Dave Parr was hit by shellfire on Wireless Ridge. He was 19, a…
The history of Britain’s secret war on Napoleon is astonishing, inspiring and disturbing
Laws and sausages, we know, are better not seen in the making; and neither are ‘black ops’. Waterloo may have…
Good first novels without ends leave one wanting more
Novels today do not want to be done. Thank Anthony Burgess and John Fowles for this, most immediately, but alternate…
Two legal big hitters consider the appropriate distribution of governmental power in Britain
Sir Stephen Sedley read English at Cambridge and Lord Dyson Classics at Oxford. Both switched to law and achieved high…
Julie Burchill is bored by Robin Green’s account of her time at Rolling Stone – and says hippies still stink
The last time I saw a copy of the New Musical Express — the ferociously influential 1970s pop paper which…
Two new books explore the triumphs and tribulations of an underrated king – Henry II
Poor old Henry II: once fêted as one of England’s greatest kings, he has long been neglected. Accessible books on…
Humans are animals, and our extinction is inevitable – but we’re still pretty amazing
Ever since enlivenment of the primordial blob, before thoughts were first verbalised, all nature has always been motivated by a…
![‘Achilles has a dispute with Agamemnon [following Briseis being taken away, and Achilles refusing to fight until she is returned]’, J.H. Tischbein, 1776, oil on canvas. (Bridgeman Images)](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/achillies.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Pat Barker travels to Troy, but finds herself diverted somewhere outside Ypres
Sing muse, begins The Iliad, of the wrath of Achilles. We are dropped straight into the tenth year of the…
Kate Atkinson’s new novel Transcription asks us how carefully we are paying attention
Transcription, Kate Atkinson’s 11th novel, sees her returning to the detective fiction she honed in her series about Jackson Brodie,…
My grandmother’s perfect pub – a memoir by Laura Thompson
As an emigrant from Scotland, I was taken aback by the weird foreignness of the south of England. Some of…
Paul Ewen’s Francis Plug is the saviour of comic fiction
Such was the perceived low standard of the 62 books recently submitted for the 2018 Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction,…
Disturbing
‘There was no body. There was no wrench. There was no evidence.’ The first two statements are undoubtedly true. Lawyers…
Handel’s greatest hits — the glorious London decades
England has been home to three great composer-entrepreneurs since 1700: Benjamin Britten in the 20th century; Arthur Sullivan in the…
Dear Mr President: the ‘little people’ write to Obama
President George Washington received about five letters a day and answered them all himself. By the end of the 19th…
Playing for time
In a pleasing nod to Marcel Proust, Eustace, the middle-aged protagonist of Patrick Gale’s new novel, is propelled into memories…
‘Ted is liar. Ted beats me up. Ted wishes me dead’: Sylvia Plath descends into madness and misery
In 1923, a Frenchman, Emile Coué, persuaded millions of Americans to finger a piece of string with exactly 20 knots.…
Peter Carrington: loyal, funny and driven by a sense of duty
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Peter, but you were a famously successful Leader of Their Lordships and I wondered whether…
Bombs and begonias: gardening in a war zone
During the civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, Mr and Mrs Roami, a science professor and a nurse,…
The ‘other’ life of Harvey Milk
This is the story of the ‘other’ Harvey Milk. We all know about Harvey the San Francisco politician who was…
Jan Morris talks to herself — about music, irony and cats
To Jan Morris, I am anathema. That goes, too, for David Attenborough. It is a word that this unarguably great…
Philip Marlowe’s last case? Only to Sleep, by Lawrence Osborne, reviewed
Only to Sleep is the third Philip Marlowe novel written by someone other than Raymond Chandler and while the authors…
A friendship in flux: Normal People, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
‘Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t…
