Books
Syria's Stalingrad: how Aleppo slipped from tolerance to terrorism
Justin Marozzi on the bitter irony of Aleppo’s ancient motto
Anthony Quinn’s Freya: an engaging costume drama
The name Freya is derived from the old Norse word for ‘spouse’, perhaps Odin’s. As a goddess she is variously…
The frightening, fascinating, inspiring story of radiation
About a century ago, scientists started meddling with an unfamiliar force of nature and the rest of us were terrified.…
When the Russians killed Mother Russia
On the 24–25 October 1917 (according to the Julian Calendar, or 7–8 November according to the Gregorian) the political disputes which…
The polite anti-Semitism of 20th-century Britain
Though it seems to begin as an affectionate memorial to his maternal grandparents, a testimonial to a rare and perfectly…
The unforeseen dangers of Uber and Airbnb
In Silicon Valley, renting out is the new selling —and renting out stuff that belongs to other people can be…
Julie Myerson captures the sorrow that surpasses all understanding
As its title suggests, Julie Myerson’s tenth novel is about stoppage: the kind that happens when one suffers a loss…
Close encounters on the starship Enterprise
For a show with a self-proclaimed ‘five-year mission’, Star Trek hasn’t done badly. Gene Roddenberry’s ‘Wagon train to the stars’…
David Astor: the saintly, tormented man who remade the Observer
Before embarking on this book, Jeremy Lewis was told by his friend Diana Athill that his subject, the newspaper editor…
What went wrong with the world economy: Mervyn King’s analysis
I once asked an American friend to come and talk to the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation. He…
Three writers
This ‘documentary’ of the lives and careers of Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall presents a detailed account,…
Sartre, de Beauvoir and Sheffield teenagers; the weird glamour of existentialism
We all carried their philosophy around in our youth, says Philip Hensher. But did anyone — including the existentialists themselves — really understand it?
Meet Paul Nash's great enemy at the Slade
Randolph Schwabe (b. 1885) was a measured man in art and in life. His drawings are meticulous, closely observed models…
When Britannia ruled the digital waves
Everyone, we hear these days, must learn to code. Being able to program computers is the only way to be…
Javier Marías's Thus Bad Begins: A touch of Vertigo in post-Franco Madrid
The title comes from Hamlet but the spirit that hovers over the pages of Javier Marías’s new novel is —…
Why do men grow beards?
The ocean that Christopher Oldstone-Moore has set out to chart is as broad as it is shallow: what it has…
Love, Robert Lowell and poetic licence
The conceit of this book — the author’s third on Robert Lowell — is strong, although its execution is less…
When Groucho Marx lectured T.S. Eliot
Groucho Marx was delighted when he heard that the script for one of his old Vaudeville routines was being reprinted…
High drama on the high seas
Ian McGuire’s second novel is an exercise in extremes: extremes of suffering, violence, environment, language and character. It tells the…
Benjamin Franklin: from man about town to man on the run
Just who was Benjamin Franklin? Apart, that is, from journalist, statesman, diplomat, founding father of the United States, inventor of…
Phil Lynott, from Dublin teenager to rock'n'roll burnout
It’s often said that there are only seven basic plots in literature. When it comes to biographies of rock stars…
The watchers and the watched: Patrick Flanery's I Am No One
‘First and last I was, and always would be, an American,’ Jeremy O’Keefe, the professor narrator of Patrick Flanery’s new…
Was Klaus Mann all Thomas Mann's fault?
Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906…
What did the ancient Greeks believe?
It is a curious fact that the modern Hebrew for ‘atheist’, Tim Whitmarsh notes in passing, is apikoros. The word…
Nietzsche's school jeremiad sounds oddly familiar
Toby Young 5 March 2016 9:00 am
When Friedrich Nietzsche was offered a professorship in classical philology at the university of Basel in 1869 he was so…