Books

A Broken Appointment

15 August 2015 9:00 am

I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…

Pollie peddling

15 August 2015 9:00 am

When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…

A Broken Appointment

13 August 2015 1:00 pm

I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…

August

13 August 2015 1:00 pm

The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…

A Broken Appointment

13 August 2015 1:00 pm

I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…

August

13 August 2015 1:00 pm

The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…

‘The Discovery of the Large, Rich, Beautiful Empire called Guiana’, from ‘Newe Weld un Americanische Historien’, by Johann Ludwig Gottfried, 1631

The strange history of Willoughbyland, modern-day Suriname

8 August 2015 9:00 am

John Gimlette on the strange and superbly told story of Willoughbyland, England’s ‘lost’ colony

The real Nikki Sixx (Photo: Getty)

The rock novel that makes Mötley Crüe dull

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Novels set in the music business (from blockbuster to coming-of-age) are few and far between — far less than in…

The BBC’s first director general, Lord Reith (Photo: Getty)

The story of the BBC

8 August 2015 9:00 am

The BBC was created out of the ether in 1922. Its first director general, Lord Reith, inhabited a cupboard some…

William Blake’s depiction of Urizen, creator and lawgiver

Is truth really beauty after all?

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…

Robert Mugabe attends the funeral of Solomon Mujuru (Photo: Getty)

A murder mystery in Zimbabwe

8 August 2015 9:00 am

This novel comes with two mysteries attached, one substantial, the other superficial. The big mystery is the author’s identity. Gender-neutral,…

Dreams

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…

Michael Moorcock (Photo: Ulf Andersen/Getty)

Michael Moorcock’s ‘autobiography’

8 August 2015 9:00 am

Michael Moorcock has put his name to more books, pamphlets and fanzines than, probably, even Michael Moorcock can count, but…

Mark Sanford and George W. Bush in 2002

The best American political memoir in a generation

8 August 2015 9:00 am

In June 2009, the good people of South Carolina lost Mark Sanford, their governor. Per his instructions, his staff told…

‘Thetis giving Achilles his arms’ (fresco), Giulio Romano, 1492–1546

A new translation of the Iliad

8 August 2015 9:00 am

‘Why do another translation of Homer?’ Richmond Lattimore asked in the foreword to his own great translation of the Iliad…

Salad days

8 August 2015 9:00 am

If you enjoy reading Greg Sheridan’s Diaries in this magazine, you’ll love this book. The author, a 30-year veteran journalist…

Dreams

6 August 2015 1:00 pm

Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…

Dreams

6 August 2015 1:00 pm

Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…

The refrigerator takes centre stage at a 1920s luncheon party

Cooling is as important to civilisation as making fire — only much harder

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Modern civilisation depends on refrigeration — but we have been trying to manufacture cold for at least 4,000 years, says Michael Bywater

The Clouded Yellow, especially vulnerable to cold, wet weather, is rare in Britain and usually confined to the South Downs and south coast

We all love butterflies — so why are we wiping them out?

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Last month, at Edinburgh School of Art, I was interested to come across a student who’d chosen Marlowe’s Dr Faustus…

A novel to cure fear of missing out

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Who’d be young? Not 25-year-old Tamsin, if her behaviour is anything to go by. A classical pianist who’s never quite…

The gangs of LA are caught in an unending bloody vendetta

1 August 2015 9:00 am

Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…

China’s repressive policy towards its Islamic fringe has badly backfired

1 August 2015 9:00 am

In October 2013, a jeep ploughed through a crowd of pedestrians on the edge of Tiananmen Square, crashed and burst…

Illusions of grandeur: Roy Strong as a Stuart king (Charles I, after Sir Anthony Van Dyck)

Camp carnival: Roy Strong’s 80th birthday pageant

1 August 2015 9:00 am

For his 75th birthday, Sir Roy Strong gave himself a personal trainer. For his 80th, he has commissioned a book…

Green djinns and a green boy: the best summer reading for children

1 August 2015 9:00 am

It’s the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland — cue an explosion of editions of the book, a new biography…