Books
Comfort the suffering
If a single book could help you to be kinder and more compassionate, could expand and deepen your understanding of…
Short – but far from sweet
Like his Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel, The Sympathisers, the stories in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees are set largely among…
Who will guard the guards?
The history of an army is essentially the history of its deeds. The history of an army within an army…
Undone by love
On the Whitsun weekend of 1935 an art student called Denton Welch was knocked off his bicycle by a car…
It’s in the memes
The greatest of Bach’s 224 cantatas is BWV 109, ‘Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben’. Its subject — the…
Worming out the truth
In Delmore Schwartz’s story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’, a young man dreams he is watching his father and mother’s engagement…
All in the mind’s eye
Everyone knows what the Rorschach tests are. Like Freudian slips, boycotts, quislings and platonic friendships, however, it was long ago…
It’s in the memes
The greatest of Bach’s 224 cantatas is BWV 109, ‘Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben’. Its subject — the…
Worming out the truth
In Delmore Schwartz’s story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities’, a young man dreams he is watching his father and mother’s engagement…
All in the mind’s eye
Everyone knows what the Rorschach tests are. Like Freudian slips, boycotts, quislings and platonic friendships, however, it was long ago…
Short – but far from sweet
Like his Pulitzer Prize-winning first novel, The Sympathisers, the stories in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees are set largely among…
Undone by love
On the Whitsun weekend of 1935 an art student called Denton Welch was knocked off his bicycle by a car…
The plight of women in Labour
We’re told not to judge books by their covers, but faced with these two it’s hard not to. Harman’s is…
The Ben and Clara affair
As a child in fascist Italy, Clara Petacci (known as Claretta) was dutifully adoring of Benito Mussolini and the cult…
Telling stories
John Burnside is the author of an impressive bookshelf of elegant novels and slim, precise volumes of poetry, and like…
In the thieves’ den
‘To get a confession from a proud male factor, it is always better to call for a poet than a…
Conning the connoisseurs
Rogues’ Gallery describes itself as a history of art and its dealers, and Philip Hook, who has worked at the…
Dead poet’s society
Alex Salmond, former first minister of Scotland, once claimed that he could always tell Scottish fiction from English. Novels, he…
More matter with less art
When A.A. Gill died last December, there was wailing and gnashing of teeth across the nation. I must admit this…
A surreal caprice
At the start of this novella the protagonist, Thibaut, is ambushed by Wehrmacht soldiers between the ninth and tenth arrondissements.…
Let me take you through the night
As a child, I used to travel with my mother from London to Cannes, a journey that took slightly under…
All human life is there
This book kept reminding me of Robin Williams in One Hour Photo. Just as his character spied on customers’ private…
Light in the East
Christopher de Bellaigue, a journalist who has spent much of his working life in the Middle East, has grown tired…
Frontier territory
In Ali’s Café, just inside Turkey on the Bulgarian border, Iraqi and Syrian refugees spend their days drinking tea. Now…
The Ben and Clara affair
As a child in fascist Italy, Clara Petacci (known as Claretta) was dutifully adoring of Benito Mussolini and the cult…
