Books
Something scary in the attic
How do you like your ghosts? Supernatural fiction is arguably the hardest to get right. Ideally it should terrify, but…
Broken dreams
In the expensive realm of musical comedy, it’s impossible to predict what will take off and what will crash and…
A revolutionary act
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Whilst this quote is often attributed to…
Warriors for liberty
It is sobering if not downright depressing to be reviewing two new books whose authors can be described as warriors…
How pleasant to know Mr Lear
Edward Lear liked to tell the story of how he was once sitting in a railway carriage with two women…
The problem with Hungary
The name of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, is on the lips of most left-wing, liberal politicians and intellectuals…
On the waterfront
Much has been made of the American novelist Jennifer Egan’s mutation, in her latest novel, from purveyor of metafiction and…
Gleaming pictures of the past
If you think you know what to expect from an Alan Hollinghurst novel, then when it comes to The Sparsholt…
Princess Uppity
Princess Margaret was everywhere on the bohemian scene of the 1960s and 1970s. She hung out with all the famous…
His dark materials
In this giant, prodigiously sourced and insightful biography, John A. Farrell shows how Richard Milhous Nixon was the nightmare of…
Highly charged territory
I first heard of this tragicomic spy romp around Israel and Palestine when Julian Barnes sang its praises in the…
Putting the boot into Italy
A young woman, naked and covered in blood, totters numbly down a night road. A driver spots her in his…
The great betrayal
They were at sea for more than two months in desperately cramped conditions. The battered ship, barely seaworthy, pitched violently…
Navigating a new world
In the 1890s, when British-owned ships carried 70 per cent of all seaborne trade, legislators worried about the proportion of…
Recent crime fiction
Gabriel Tallent’s My Absolute Darling (4th Estate, £12.99) has the word masterpiece emblazoned on the cover, alongside quotes from several…
Re-discovering Cook
Despite an unpleasant resurgence of anti-British, anti-European political correctness, Captain James Cook (1728-1779) remains one of the world’s greatest explorers.…
Lost in the metropolis
Richard Rogers is to architecture what Jamie Oliver is to cookery. It is not enough for either of them just…
Octopus beaks and snake soup
Driving across Japan’s Shikuko island, the food and travel writer Michael Booth pulls into a filling station to find, alongside…
That’s no lady
Did I enjoy this novel? Yes! Nevertheless, it dismayed me. How could John Banville, whom I’ve admired so much ever…
Band of bickering brothers
There aren’t many downsides to being a film critic, but one of them is being asked to name your favourite…
The keys to Chinese
The history of industry is the story of the reduction of complexity to easily manageable, replicable components or actions. But…
The worst things happen at sea
This horrifying and engrossing book could scarcely be improved upon. In this age of HRHs Harry, William and Kate-led openness…
August Auguste
In 1959 the formidable interviewer John Freeman took the Face to Face crew to the 81-year-old Augustus John’s studio. The…
A poet in prose
Literary reputation can be a fickle old business. Those garlanded during their lifetimes are often quickly forgotten once dead. Yet…
Who is Sylvia – what is she?
In May 1956, three months after meeting Ted Hughes, one before they will marry, Sylvia Plath writes to her mother…
