Books

Marina Lewycka’s Granny steals the show

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Marina Lewycka’s latest happy-go-lucky tale of migrant folk in Britain takes a remark by the modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin as…

A butterfly-powered parachute gently ridicules the French obsession with flight in the late 18th century, illustrated in Gaston Tissandier’s Histoire des ballons et des aéronautes célèbres: 1783–1800

Steve Jones’s chaotic theory of history

7 May 2016 9:00 am

‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad.’ Philip Larkin’s most famous line has appeared in the Spectator repeatedly, and…

How we went from mere betting to gaming the world

7 May 2016 9:00 am

If I prang your car, we can swap insurance details. In the past, it would have been necessary for you…

Kathmandu is famously reputed to have more temples than houses, more idols than residents

Kathmandu — or don’t

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Although Nepal’s earthquake last April visited our television screens with images of seismic devastation, the disaster has probably had little…

Losers in the game of life

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Mysteries abound here — enigmas of identity and betrayal, long-buried secret transactions leading to quests — for a lost child,…

Out of time and harsh: the historical treatment of the female composer

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Just a few weeks ago, Germany’s VAN magazine published an interview with the composer Olga Neuwirth. In it she describes…

The hip-hop intellectual from inner-city Baltimore

7 May 2016 9:00 am

The author of the bestseller Between the World and Me and recipient of a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ last year, Ta-Nehisi…

Emil Zátopek at the height of his powers

Emil Zátopek: a legend from athletics’ golden age of innocence

7 May 2016 9:00 am

The story of the Czechoslovak runner Emil Zátopek is a tale from athletics’ age of innocence. Without the aid of…

A love letter to all great dictionaries

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Asked to name a reference book, you may well choose the Encyclopaedia Britannica or the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary. But…

Existentialism and taboo sex scream of youth trying too hard

7 May 2016 9:00 am

How many debut collections does it take to stand up to one of the most accomplished short-story writers of the…

Oliver Goldsmith: still an enigma

Oliver Goldsmith: the most fascinating bore in literature

7 May 2016 9:00 am

On 10 April 1772, the biographer James Boswell recorded in his diary that he had hugged himself with pleasure on…

‘Pineapple with cockroaches’, 1702–03, by Maria Merian

Books and arts opener

7 May 2016 9:00 am

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The sentimental socialist

7 May 2016 9:00 am

Having done something similar myself, I wondered how Bill Shorten would handle the challenge of a campaign biography. My book,…

‘Street in Auvers-sur-Oise’ by Vincent van Gogh

Why we love unfinished art

30 April 2016 9:00 am

An unfinished painting can provide a startling glimpse of the artist at work. But the common tendency to prefer it to a finished work is being taken to extremes, says Philip Hensher

The Wicked Boy is finally redeemed

30 April 2016 9:00 am

During the heatwave in the summer of 1895, the Gentlemen v. Players match at Lords Cricket Ground on 8 July…

The famous rip tide in French Pass, Marlborough Sounds, New Zealand

Across the river... and into the trees

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Water accounts for 70 per cent of your planet, and 60 per cent of your body. Yet when do you…

Without mankind, dogs wouldn’t stand a chance

What dogs are really up to

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Before I read this book, I thought I knew what a dog was. It barks, it wags its tail, it…

A real-life Tristram Shandy – found in a skip

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Most modern biographers feed off celebrity like vampires let loose in a blood bank. That is why their books sell:…

Making Nietzsche New

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Had you been down at Naumburg barracks early in March 1867, you might have seen a figure take a running…

Chairman Mao devours his foes

30 April 2016 9:00 am

Frank Dikötter, professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong and winner of the Samuel Johnson prize in 2011,…

Harry Farr, a soldier with the 1st Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, was executed for cowardice, aged 25, in 1916 when he refused to fight, despite almost certainly suffering from shell shock

The shocks and shells of the Somme

30 April 2016 9:00 am

In the final months of 1914, medical officers on the Western Front began seeing a new kind of casualty. Soldiers…

The race from the Big C to the Big D

30 April 2016 9:00 am

The ‘journey’ — at least the one played out in public — begins with an announcement that you are incurable.…

Training the horse from hell

30 April 2016 9:00 am

There were moments while reading this sprawling, ambitious novel when I thought I was reading a masterpiece. But at other…

The interior of the Swan Theatre, Southwark, in 1596, based on a sketch by a Dutch traveller, Johannes de Witt, and probably the best indicator of what the Globe Theatre would have looked like.

William Shakespeare: all things to all men

23 April 2016 9:00 am

The best new books celebrating Shakespeare’s centenary are full of enthusiasm and insight — but none plucks out the heart of his mystery, says Daniel Swift

‘Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh...’ (From The Merchant of Venice)

O, vengeance! Why, what an ass am I!

23 April 2016 9:00 am

Given this year’s 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, there was always going to be a slew of new publications; few,…