Books
Understated eloquence
It is 50 years since the publication of Very Like a Whale, Ferdinand Mount’s first novel. ‘Mr Mount’s distinguishing feature…
A unique literary phenomenon
The Argentinian writer César Aira is a prodigy: at the age of 68 he has published, according to a ‘partial…
The lost Stradivarius
Min Kym is a violinist, but if you Google her name you won’t find sound-clips or concert reviews, touring schedules…
An untouchable star
This slight book comes with heavy baggage. In 2009, Rampling handed back a hefty advance for her contribution to a…
Fragments of the future
Science fiction is not the first thing one thinks of in connection with the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, though the…
The pleasures of reading aloud
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Buzzing bees and chocolate trees
It is estimated that the world’s insects perform an annual pollination service for all humankind worth $215 billion. In return,…
Two small boys in the sea
An estimated 400,000 people drown annually worldwide, 50 per cent of them children. Roughly 150 drownings occur in the UK.…
Dreaming of wide open spaces
On the website of the Australian National University in Canberra, emeritus professor of history Barry Higman lists his research interests…
The sweet life turns sour
Shawn Levy specialises in chronicling 20th-century hotspots such as London in the Sixties and Sinatra’s Vegas. Here, he turns his…
The man who’s read everything
According to Martin Amis in The Information, the last person to have read every book ever published was Coleridge. Faced…
The saddest show on earth
It’s the early 20th century, and two strange-looking boys, purportedly twins named Iko and Eko, are playing in a circus…
Out of hot water
During and after the second world war the Fourteenth Army in Burma became famous as the Forgotten Army, almost as…
Back to basics
Tim Parks is a writer of some very fine books indeed, which makes it even more of a shame that…
A choice of recent thrillers
A young Norwegian police officer finds a rusting vintage car inside a locked and disused barn, and the presence of…
Who’s the expert now?
The title might be taken as a provocation. In the compressed language of digital media, white tears, like first-world problems…
Furry fury
Thanks to Henry Williamson and Gavin Maxwell I have spent hours in the company of otters, though I have only…
Welsh wizardry
When Stravinsky visited David Jones in his cold Harrow bedsit, he came away saying, ‘I have been in the presence…
The best sort of magic realism
Michael Fishwick’s new novel tells the story of a young man called Robbie, who has been uprooted from his London…
A genial green guide to 2000 AD
I can recall exactly where I was 40 years ago when I didn’t buy the first issue — or ‘prog’…
Mach the Knife
The business of banking (from the Italian word banco, meaning ‘counter’) was essentially Italian in origin. The Medici bank, founded…
Prophesying doom
Boualem Sansal’s prophetic novel very clearly derives its lineage from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. A totalitarian surveillance state, a fundamentalist…
Holy heroes
The Reformation is such a huge, sprawling historical subject that it makes sense, in this the 500th anniversary of Martin…
The road to independence
Alone with her father’s dead body, Olive Piper says, ‘I don’t know anything, except what I feel, and how can…
An epic for our times
Trailing rave US reviews, fan letters from Yann Martel and Khaled Hosseini and a reputation as ‘Doctor Zhivago for the…
