Books
Who needs jihad?
Citizens of New World nations – North and South America, Australia and New Zealand – invariably assume that anyone settling…
In praise of neigh-sayers
Wallace Stevens gave us ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’. The German scholar Ulrich Raulff, in this meaty book…
Travelling hopefully
Olga Tokarczuk examines questions of travel in our increasingly interconnected and fast-moving world. The award-winning Polish writer channels her wanderlust…
Sisters in scandal
In our age of elasticated leisurewear, ready meals and box sets on telly, it is exhilarating to read about people…
Sheen of authenticity
In 2006, after five decades, Shaun Greenhalgh lost his enthusiasm for the British Museum. From a very early age, he…
Nazis and the dark arts
When he came to power Hitler had a dowser scour the Reich Chancellery for cancerous ‘death rays’. Before flying to…
Ever decreasing circles
‘The area’s isolation has given it a strong sense of community and independence,’ runs the Wikipedia entry on New Addington.…
Take heart
In this magnificent book, Thomas Morris provides us with a thoughtful, engaging and rigorous account of how cardiac surgeons through…
Sink or swim
I used to worry that I would never be a good writer because my childhood wasn’t interesting enough. I now…
Hornet highballs anyone?
After school last Wednesday, I watched my five-year-old daughter pop a dead cricket on to her tongue and proclaim it:…
Three for the road
One of the great challenges in life, writes Richard Ford in Between Them, ‘is to know our parents fully —…
Cries and whispers
There’s a moment in A Boy in Winter where a young Ukrainian policeman has to escort his town’s Jewish population…
Gilded prostitution
‘An English peer of very old title is desirous of marrying at once a very wealthy lady, her age and…
Rescuing an Irish gem
This large and splendid book is more in the nature of a grand illustrated guidebook than a historical monograph. Hundreds…
The sting of betrayal
This may seem an odd thing to say about a writer who’s been officially declared a National Living Treasure in…
First signs of thaw
The Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party in February 1956 passed off entirely without incident. Speeches on the next five-year…
The bridge of size
Before Brooklyn exceeded it in cool, Manhattanites spoke dismissively of BNTs. These were the Bridge ‘n’ Tunnel folk, the out-of-towners…
A man with an agenda
What’s this? An autobiography by Stuart Hall? Wasn’t he one of the guys who put the Eng. Lit. departments out…
Days of frantic strumming
‘It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it,’ sang the Desperate Bicycles on their self-funded debut single in…
Mad matrons and horrid housemistresses
It’s not often that books make me laugh aloud. Even books I’m officially finding funny often do no more than…
Class observation
A hoicked-up small boy sits astride a yoked-up heavy horse, while three sun-stained men smile at posterity. Hairy hooves press…
Lessons and games
‘Kokkinakis banged your girlfriend. Sorry to tell you that, mate,’ the Australian tennis player Nick Kyrgios remarked to his opponent…
Every horror imaginable
The group of kidnapped women were terrified. They had been brought back to the camp as booty and were being…
Towering tree of God
In his biography of Gaudí, published in 2001, Gijs van Hensbergen opined that ‘we should never try to finish the…
Brava Bella
I like Bella Pollen for her open-mindedness, self-deprecation and verve. Given her early success as a fashion designer — top…
