Books
A matter of life and death
Shades of The Master and Margarita haunt Rabih Alameddine’s sixth book, in which Jacob, a Yemeni-born poet with a day…
Time is of the essence
Christopher Priest, now 73, has been quietly turning out oddly mesmerising fiction for nearly half a century but, like the…
The passionate patriot
To anyone complaining that American politics in 2016 is uncivil, consider this: in 1804, the vice president of the United…
Special K
Our collective attention spans may not be as short as is widely cited, but they are pretty short. Take the…
Apples for our eyes
Apple Day, on 21 October, is a newish festival, created in 1990, by the venerable organisation, Common Ground. Intended to…
In the company of queens
Steven Runciman, the historian of Byzantium, is a puzzling figure. He was an outrageous snob, once remarking that he would…
And the answer is…
Doorstoppers, slim volumes, loose leaves stacked in a box, bound pages fretworked with holes, epistolary exchanges, online postings, palimpsests…. Fiction…
Behind the fringe
‘Sexual intercourse began / In nineteen sixty-three,’ Philip Larkin famously announced in his poem ‘Annus Mirabilis’, ‘Between the end of…
The world in limbo
In 1919 the economist and sometime prophet John Maynard Keynes left the glittering ballroom of Versailles feeling profoundly despondent. The…
Paintbrushes at the ready
When the old curmudgeon Edgar Degas died in 1917, a stunning trove of works by Edouard Manet — eight paintings,…
He blew his mind out in a car
There was a touch of Raymond Radiguet, the young literary sensation of 1920s Paris, about Tara Browne. In life poetically…
Too good to be true
The McNulty family in the novels of Sebastian Barry have a definite claim to be one of the unluckiest in…
His and her healthcare
When I started this book, I have to admit, I did not think it would be as absolutely fascinating as…
England’s unloved king
Aethelred the Unready (c.968—1016) has not, as Levi Roach acknowledges, enjoyed a good press. In recent times there may have…
A parable of good and evil
It is difficult to write well about slavery. As with the Holocaust, the subject’s horrific nature lends itself too easily…
Courting the Iron Lady
This is a strange book. Peter Stothard, the editor of the TLS, is packing up his office. It is a…
A study in alienation
Looking for the Outsider is the biography of a novel, from conception through publication to critical reception. Alice Kaplan’s life-story…
Trumped up
If Donald Trump keeps campaigning on immigration, he cannot lose. His Democrat rival for the US presidency, Hillary Clinton, has…
Thoroughly bewitching
Angela Carter was a seminal, a watershed novelist: perhaps one of the last generation of novelists to change both the…
A puzzling phenomenon
Everyone has played it, or one of its manifold variations and rip-offs. Blocks of different shapes fall from the sky;…
Over hill and dale
When it comes to speaking of foreign affairs, Rory Stewart is one of the few MPs who does not peddle…
Derring-do in the desert
The SAS was the first unit to be granted regimental status for generations. Its chief aim was to damage the…
The magic of bookshops
It is not uncommon for writers to be obsessed by bookshops. Some even find their writing feet through loving a…
Bolsheviks on board
Full allowance must be made for the desperate tasks to which the German war leaders were already committed… Nevertheless it…
More sinned against than sinning
The 55-year-old ’flu-ridden John Charles Wallop, 3rd Earl of Portsmouth, his feet in a basin of warm water, shivered in…
