Books
Machado de Assis wasn’t the Dickens of Brazil— but he is one of the greats
The surname is pronounced ‘M’shahdo j’Asseece’. There are also two Christian names — Joaquim Maria — which are usually dispensed…
John Freeman: polymath or psychopath?
They don’t make Englishmen like the aptly named John Freeman any more. When he died last Christmas just shy of…
An epic study of trauma and friendship in the age of self-invention
Just over a century after Virginia Woolf declared that ‘on or about December 1910 human character changed’, the American novelist…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
Pollie peddling
When Christopher Pyne’s A Letter to My Children was launched, a bunch of radical students mounted a violent demonstration. The…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
A Broken Appointment
I opened the envelope: it contained a ticket in my name from London St Pancras to Paris Nord, departing at…
August
The weather is unseasonably cold, the flat’s floorboards cold. In the garden the courgette flowers but fails to fruit. The…
The strange history of Willoughbyland, modern-day Suriname
John Gimlette on the strange and superbly told story of Willoughbyland, England’s ‘lost’ colony
The rock novel that makes Mötley Crüe dull
Novels set in the music business (from blockbuster to coming-of-age) are few and far between — far less than in…
The story of the BBC
The BBC was created out of the ether in 1922. Its first director general, Lord Reith, inhabited a cupboard some…
Is truth really beauty after all?
Mediterranean crockery has a lot to answer for. It famously spoke thus to John Keats: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,…
A murder mystery in Zimbabwe
This novel comes with two mysteries attached, one substantial, the other superficial. The big mystery is the author’s identity. Gender-neutral,…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Michael Moorcock’s ‘autobiography’
Michael Moorcock has put his name to more books, pamphlets and fanzines than, probably, even Michael Moorcock can count, but…
The best American political memoir in a generation
In June 2009, the good people of South Carolina lost Mark Sanford, their governor. Per his instructions, his staff told…
A new translation of the Iliad
‘Why do another translation of Homer?’ Richmond Lattimore asked in the foreword to his own great translation of the Iliad…
Salad days
If you enjoy reading Greg Sheridan’s Diaries in this magazine, you’ll love this book. The author, a 30-year veteran journalist…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Dreams
Early August and not yet half past eight, but all along the dual carriageway more than half the cars have…
Cooling is as important to civilisation as making fire — only much harder
Modern civilisation depends on refrigeration — but we have been trying to manufacture cold for at least 4,000 years, says Michael Bywater
We all love butterflies — so why are we wiping them out?
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
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
Ryan Gattis’s novel All Involved is set in South Central Los Angeles in 1992, during the riots that began after…
