Books
Preacher and prosecutor
Craig Raine is a pugnacious figure in the fractious world of contemporary poetry. When his poem ‘Gatwick’ appeared in the…
Of microbes and men
Which disease are you most scared of catching: Ebola or influenza? Before I read this medical memoir, I would have…
Escape into pop
‘How can you come into this room and ask me “What is the purpose of life?”,’ wails Massive Attack’s laconic…
Life’s rich collage
Such is the veneration in this country for the St Ives school of painters, it’s easy to forget that other…
Ce n’est pas la guerre
On 1 July 1916, along a frontage of 18 miles, 100,000 British infantrymen — considerably more than the entire strength…
The food of love
‘You are the most adorable man and artist, intelligent, gifted, simple, loving and noble… I am really very, very lucky…
The road to catastrophe
France’s problems today should lessen the condescension of posterity towards Louis XVI. Presidents of the Republic have proved just as…
A choice of crime novels
Pascal Garnier’s novella Too Close to the Edge (Gallic, £7.99, translated by Emily Boyce) deals with the boredom of middle…
The child is father of the man
Are writers born or made? The answer, by the end of Love from Boy — a selection of Roald Dahl’s…
The artist as lover
Roland Penrose (1900–84) was a Surrealist painter and object-maker, a collector and art world grandee, a writer and organiser of…
The blank on the map
‘Is Geoff Dyer someone on your radar?’ inquired the courtly literary editor, inviting me to review this book. What a…
The mystery of the waggle-dance
The Dancing Bees is a romantic title, evoking fantasy and fairy tale rather than scientific rigour, but actually this book…
The great depression
If it was not yet ‘The Age of Anxiety’ in 1947, when Auden published his long poem of the same…
Misadventures in Libya
If photographs of ‘the deal in the desert’ made you queasy — you remember, Tony Blair and Muammar Gaddafi shaking…
A merry guide
If you have legs, or a bicycle, or indeed both, you are going to love this book. Chaps, no matter…
Cervantes the seer
William Egginton opens his book with a novelistic reimagining: here’s Miguel de Cervantes, a toothless old geezer of nearly 60,…
Missing in action
‘Missing in action is the worst state to which we can lose a human being,’ avers Commodore (Ret.) Ajith Boyagoda…
Into a cloud-scratched sky
There have been a number of attempts to graft the style of the so-called new nature writing onto the novel:…
The clean and the unclean
In 1991, Moby folded the theme from Twin Peaks into a remix of his dance track ‘Go’ and a diminutive,…
Park life
Petrichor. Coined as recently as 1964 but redolent of Eden onwards, the word appears in neither of these volumes but…
Hacks and robbers
Readers of advanced years like me will almost certainly remember the bow-tied figure of Edgar Lustgarten, star of any number…
Woolton’s war
In wartime the housekeeping is a nightmare. While fighting Napoleon in Spain the Duke of Wellington sent an infuriated letter…
Annie Proulx is lost in the woods
You can’t see the wood for the trees in Annie Proulx’s epic novel of logging and deforestation in North America, says Philip Hensher
Nicky Haslam: my two absolutely fabulous girlfriends
Many years ago, working on a project in Tel Aviv, I had a meeting-free weekend. I know, I thought, I’ll…
For fashionable Victorian travellers, the only way was Norway
‘The only use of a gentleman in travelling,’ Emmeline Lowe wrote in 1857, ‘is to take care of the luggage.’…
