Books
Vignettes of a bygone English childhood
Across the fields from the medieval manor house of Toad Hall, and the accompanying 16th-century timber-frame apothecary’s house which Alan…
The horror of post-Brexit Britain: Perfidious Albion, by Sam Byers, reviewed
Edmundsbury, the fictional, sketchily rendered town in which the action of this novel takes place, is part of a social…
![The proud, lonely queen dressed up in Garter ribbon and diamonds for dinner at Sandringham every night, even when alone with the king [Getty Images]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/queenmary.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Queen Mary: stiff and cold, but no kleptomaniac
The best royal biography ever written is probably James Pope-Hennessy’s Queen Mary. Published in 1959, only six years after the…
Why has V.S. Naipaul rejected the Trinidad of his birth?
Savi Naipaul Akal’s publishing house is named after the peepal tree, in whose shade Buddha is said to have achieved…
Shades of Rear Window: People in the Room, by Norah Lange, reviewed
A girl at a window, hidden behind curtains, watches three women in a dimly lit drawing room in the house…
![The First Opium War: The East India Company’s Nemesis and other boats destroy the Chinese war junks in Anson Bay, 7 January 1841 [Bridgeman Art Library]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/opiumwars.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Global Britain was built as a narco-empire
China, wrote Adam Smith, is ‘one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious…
The two works of fiction I re-read annually
Long ago, I interviewed Edmund White and found that the photographer assigned to the job was the incomparable Jane Bown…
Mysterious ways
This is Greg Sheridan’s best book because it is his bravest. He tackles an important subject in a challenging way…
Amazing mazes: the pleasures of getting lost in the labyrinth
When Boris Johnson resigned recently he automatically gave up his right to use Chevening House in Kent, bequeathed by the…
The Inquisition on trial: the ordeals of Giordano Bruno and Galileo
If you go to the Campo dei Fiori in Rome on 17 February every year, you’ll find yourself surrounded by…
A suffragette sequel: Old Baggage, by Lissa Evans reviewed
Lissa Evans has had a good idea for her new novel. It’s ‘suffragettes: the sequel’. She sets her story not…
Portrait of an American childhood: A Long Island Story by Rick Gekoski reviewed
Success as a rare books dealer, academic, publisher, broadcaster and author of several non-fiction books — at 70, Rick Gekoski…
David Sedaris, the current king of humorists, is often not funny at all
Since the 17th century, a ‘humourist’ has been a witty person, and especially someone skilled in literary comedy. In 1871,…
Born again: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
The new novel by the author of the 2016 Booker shortlisted Eileen is at once a jumble of influences —…
Bruce Lee: weird, gruesome and oh-so-cool
Every cinema-loving person has a favourite Bruce Lee moment. My own comes towards the end of Enter the Dragon, the…
![Mandela revisits his prison cell on Robben Island in 1994 [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/mandela.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
What Nelson Mandela really craved in prison: Pond’s Cold Cream
So much rubbish has been written over the years by those who feared, revered or pretended to know Nelson Mandela…
Shades of the Mitfords: After the Party, by Cressida Connolly, reviewed
At the beginning of After the Party, Phyllis Forrester tells us she was in prison. While inside, her hair turned…
A cold archaeological gaze: In the Garden of the Fugitives, by Ceridwen Dovey, reviewed
Visiting Pompeii, it is hard to miss the garden of the fugitives. It is on every other postcard in the…
Adam Smith analysed human behaviour, not economics, says Simon Heffer
Jesse Norman is one of only three or four genuine intellectuals on the Tory benches in the House of Commons.…
Kyoto is all that is left of Japan – more’s the pity
‘Much of what I say may turn out not to be true.’ Hardly the ideal beginning to a guided tour.…
Who needs a plot? asks Anne Tyler
Willa Drake’s second husband calls her ‘little one’, even though she is over 60 and the mother of two grown…
‘T’ is for Trotskyite
Varlam Shalamov’s short stories of life in the Soviet Gulag leave an impression of ice-sharp precision, vividness and lucidity, as…
A melancholy talent with a genius for send-up – Flann O’Brien was his own worst enemy
It is tempting to compare two highly intelligent, learned and gifted young Dublin writers, suffering under the burdensome, Oedipal influence…
Turn off and tune out
All good non-fiction writing shares certain characteristics: consistent economy, upbeat pace and digestible ideas that logically flow. Tech writers have…
Can a paedophilic relationship ever be excused?
Sofka Zinovieff’s new novel, Putney, is an involving, beautifully written, and subtle account of an affair in the 1970s between…
