Books

Victoria as a child, by Richard Westall

Queen Victoria was born to be a novelist — this book proves it

6 June 2015 9:00 am

A wonderfully vivid school story has surfaced written by Queen Victoria as a child. The monarch was clearly a sensational novelist manqué, says Philip Hensher

Owen Sheers disregards the first commandment of novel-writing: to show, not tell

6 June 2015 9:00 am

This is a thriller, a novel of betrayal and separation, and a reverie on death and grieving. The only key…

If a novel about failure fails, does that make it a success?

6 June 2015 9:00 am

I must be an idiot for pointing out the failings of a novel that’s so screamingly, self-denouncingly about failure. Steve…

Tallulah Bankhead — at home in louche Maidenhead

Oscar Wilde, Christine Keeler, Ivor Novello and Isambard Kingdom Brunel make unexpected companions on the Great Western

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Readers who have put in some time on the railways may remember the neat, brush-painted graffiti that appeared in 1974…

Catherine Lampert, 1986

Frank Auerbach: frightened of heights, dogs, driving, swimming — but finding courage through painting

6 June 2015 9:00 am

With a career of more than 60 years so far, Frank Auerbach is undoubtedly one of the big beasts of…

Finders Keepers is not so much a book as a shot-by-shot description of a future film

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Finders Keepers is a sort-of sequel to last year’s Mr Mercedes, Stephen King’s first foray into what he called ‘hard-boiled…

New ways to destroy the world

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost…

What’s wrong with the Victoria Cross

6 June 2015 9:00 am

‘It is the task of a Patton or a Napoleon to persuade soldiers that bits of ribbon are intrinsically valuable.…

Béla Bartók recording folk songs with villagers in Hungary, 1907

Bartók would have made history even if he’d never composed a note

6 June 2015 9:00 am

‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian…

San Domenico church, Palermo

Palermo: city of jasmine and dark secrets

6 June 2015 9:00 am

The Arabs invaded Sicily in the ninth century, leaving behind mosques and pink-domed cupolas. In the Sicilian capital of Palermo,…

Encounters with the nastiest people on the internet

6 June 2015 9:00 am

It is almost a century since the Michelin brothers had the brainwave of supplementing their motorists’ guide with information about…

Bond would be bored in today’s MI6, says Malcolm Rifkind

6 June 2015 9:00 am

Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…

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6 June 2015 9:00 am

In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…

Books & arts

6 June 2015 9:00 am

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4 June 2015 1:00 pm

In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…

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4 June 2015 1:00 pm

In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…

The battle of Lepanto, October 1571

From Barbary corsairs to people-traffickers: the violence of the Mediterranean

30 May 2015 9:00 am

The Mediterranean has always been central to European civilisation — and a source of drama and conflict, says Anthony Sattin

All might have been well had Nicholas II only listened to a tiny cosmopolitan elite

30 May 2015 9:00 am

The veteran Russian historian Dominic Lieven’s new study of Russia’s descent towards the first world war is deeply researched, highly…

Fathers and sons — seen from multiple angles

30 May 2015 9:00 am

‘People talk about their childhood and it’s so mundane. I don’t remember much about it, if I’m honest. I can’t…

Is Julian Barnes right to think Lucian Freud will survive? Jonathan Meades thinks not

30 May 2015 9:00 am

The subject of the least characteristic essay in this engrossing collection of meditations on painters, painters’ lives, painting and reactions…

Tomatoes and melons from the garden of the Prince Bishop of Eichstatt (German school, 17th century)

A kitchen-garden renaissance

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Considerable areas of our memory are taken up with food: it might be the taste of Mother’s sponge, the melting…

White dwarfs and neutron stars — stepping-stones to the black hole

30 May 2015 9:00 am

The idea of black holes sounds so quintessentially modern and 20th-century that it may come as a surprise to learn…

To Land’s End and beyond: footsore but bravely coasting along

30 May 2015 9:00 am

It’s a real skill, writing about a journey where nothing ever happens. We shouldn’t be surprised that Simon Armitage is…

By, with, of and for Kim Kardashian — keeping up with Kulture

30 May 2015 9:00 am

The almond eyes that rise towards their outer edges. The cheekbones that curve down to the corners of those upholstered…

Elizabeth Day urges women to be more ‘me first’, less ‘no, no, after you’

30 May 2015 9:00 am

Paradise City, Elizabeth Day’s third novel, comes with an accompanying essay on The Pool — an online magazine for the…