Books
How not to tell a soldier’s story
Attempts by soldiers themselves to describe to us our 21st-century wars have come, so far, in a few recognisable varieties:…
Books and Arts opener
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Hat trick
Kipling once wrote a poem lamenting that the three-volume romantic novel (‘The old three-decker’) was said to be extinct. It…
How to view the view
It’s not all picnics and cowslips. You need sense as well as sensibility to appreciate a landscape, says Mary Keen
The heavens are falling
The dystopian novel in which a Ballardian deluge or viral illness transforms planet Earth has become something of a sub-genre,…
What’s next for Comrade Corbyn?
‘Ah, Jeremy,’ remarked Tony Blair at a smart dinner party in Islington not long before he became prime minister, ‘he…
Why the British make a virtue of defeat
When Henry Worsley died last month attempting the first solo, unaided expedition across the Antarctic, he was 30 miles short…
A fairytale return for Graham Swift
The opening of Graham Swift’s new novel clearly signals his intent. ‘Once upon a time’ tells us that this will…
Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell and the rebirth of a nation
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
Jhumpa Lahiri's new tongue
Imagine you’re an unknown young writer whose first collection of stories wins the Pulitzer prize. Your first novel is filmed,…
Coming of age in New York
I read this, Meg Rosoff’s first novel for adults (though her previous fiction, aimed at teenagers, is widely enjoyed by…
Charles Foster: ‘I need to be more of a badger’
Being a Beast is an impassioned and proselytising work of philosophy based on a spectacular approach to nature writing. That…
In grandmother’s treasure-chest
Juliet Nicolson examines women’s lives and changing fashions through a rich hoard of buttons for all occasions
Enraptured by raptors
The fewer birds there are, the more books about them, particularly of the literary kind. Helen MacDonald’s H is for…
Joan Bakewell: on socks, fridge magnets, teddy bears and such stuff
I don’t know if this counts as name-dropping, but I recently interviewed a boyhood friend of Elvis Presley’s in Tupelo,…
Inside the mind of a molester
This isn’t a book to read before lights out. It’s about a mentally ill man whose mother exiles him from…
Paris: a beautiful, damned city
The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard,…
Tim Parks’s one-sided ‘love story’ is a long trudge in the rain
The title of Tim Parks’s 17th novel is false advertising, because Thomas and Mary: A Love Story is barely a…
Nicholas Hawksmoor: a genius in his own right
In the conclusion to his very substantial study of England’s least known and most misunderstood Baroque architect, Owen Hopkins discusses…
Thin air and frayed tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
The mother of all problems
For a child, the idea of ‘knowing’ your mother doesn’t compute; she’s merely there. As an adult, there may be…
1956: the year of living dangerously
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…
The Punch and Judy country that’s beyond a joke
In recent weeks, North Korea allegedly developed a hydrogen bomb and hangover-free booze. This would be a worrying combination in…
The realm of England: from the Pennines to the Pyrenees
Most people know more about the 12th century than they think they do. This is, as Richard Huscroft reminds us…
Pretentiousness isn’t such a crime
Jonathan Beckman 20 February 2016 9:00 am
Aversion to pretentiousness was probably an English trait before Dr Johnson famously refuted Bishop Berkeley’s arguments for the immateriality of…