Books
In hot water
It’s good to be back in Spook Street, home of the nation’s secret service. From a handful of locations across…
Whited sepulchre
‘How often’, wrote Sigmund Freud in 1914, ‘have I mounted the steep steps from the unlovely Corso Cavour to the…
Riding the storm
Clover Stroud opens her memoir with the crippling bout of post-natal depression that hit after the birth of her fourth…
The great Norse soap opera
Norse myths are having a moment. Or should I say another moment; one of a long chain of moments, in…
Sins of the flesh
Bill Schutt has an excellent subject, and he explores it from a promising angle. Cannibalism has long interested zoologists, anthropologists,…
Spurred on
‘Old radicals become quietist’ a character in Valley of the Weed tells Plant, the appropriately-named private detective investigating the disappearance…
Do you know who I am?
Anyone looking for a groundbreaking ethnography of the global political elite —the elusive social grouping that western electorates are currently…
A scandalous scramble
Empires in the Sun might conjure up romantic visions for some, but this book’s essence is distilled in its subtitle,…
An infinite spirit
Can American publishers be dissuaded from foisting absurd, bombastic subtitles on their books as if readers are all Trumpers avid…
Boy wonder
Back in 1978, a young and already successful Steven Spielberg told a bunch of would-be moviemakers at the American Film…
Lord of the Arctic
According to the author of this beautifully illustrated, hugely engaging book, if we were ever to choose a fellow mammal…
Before the bling
If you read the first volume of John Romer’s A History of Egypt, which traces events along the Nile from…
The empathy trap
Being against empathy sounds like being against flowers or sparrows. Surely empathy is a good thing? Isn’t one of the…
Telling on mother
Like many debut novels, The Nix, by the American author Nathan Hill, is about somebody writing their first book. Samuel…
A losing streak
In backgammon, a blot is a single checker, sitting alone and unprotected. This is a sly title for this sly…
Dangerous liaisons
In a Kashmiri apple orchard, a young fugitive from the Indian army’s cruel oppressions spots a snake that has ‘mistaken…
Reading between the lines
Writing to her sister Cassandra about Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, Jane Austen declared, in a parody of Walter…
A singular horror
Seventy years after the Nazi Holocaust, against the background of a rich and varied literature, Laurence Rees has achieved the…
Before the bling
If you read the first volume of John Romer’s A History of Egypt, which traces events along the Nile from…
A singular horror
Seventy years after the Nazi Holocaust, against the background of a rich and varied literature, Laurence Rees has achieved the…
Telling on mother
Like many debut novels, The Nix, by the American author Nathan Hill, is about somebody writing their first book. Samuel…
An infinite spirit
Can American publishers be dissuaded from foisting absurd, bombastic subtitles on their books as if readers are all Trumpers avid…
Reading between the lines
Writing to her sister Cassandra about Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, Jane Austen declared, in a parody of Walter…
Lord of the Arctic
According to the author of this beautifully illustrated, hugely engaging book, if we were ever to choose a fellow mammal…
Do you know who I am?
Anyone looking for a groundbreaking ethnography of the global political elite —the elusive social grouping that western electorates are currently…
