Books

Black Knight

8 January 2015 3:00 pm

A few forgotten objects Dad passed on: copperplate pens with long nail nibs, still stained black, one coal-fire red, laid…

Title stories: The moon and sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

8 January 2015 3:00 pm

The post Title stories: The moon and sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to…

Black Knight

8 January 2015 3:00 pm

A few forgotten objects Dad passed on: copperplate pens with long nail nibs, still stained black, one coal-fire red, laid…

Title stories: The moon and sixpence by W. Somerset Maugham

8 January 2015 3:00 pm

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.

Henry VIII, Edward VI, Charles I, George VI and George V

Game of thrones: five kings spanning five centuries launch a new series on royalty

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Nigel Jones reviews the first five titles to appear in a new series on British monarchs

Fact, fiction or farce? The American comic novel is becoming increasingly hard to define

3 January 2015 9:00 am

The American comic novel is going through an odd phase. Just lately it seems like anything funny must sneak in…

Stories about storytelling: Kirsty Gunn’s preoccupation with words is utterly entrancing

3 January 2015 9:00 am

Although entitled Infidelities this collection of short stories could as well be called Choices, because that is what really preoccupies…

Benjamin Robert Haydon’s portrait of William Wordsworth

Sunday roasts and beaded bubbles: dining with the poets

3 January 2015 9:00 am

In December 1817 Benjamin Robert Haydon — vivid diarist and painter of huge but inferior canvases of historic events —…

Mark Steyn: a hairy, successful version of myself, says Julie Burchill

3 January 2015 9:00 am

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, Mark Steyn is sort of a hairy, successful version of me—…

John Steinbeck at the time of writing Travels with Charley

Touring America in Steinbeck’s footsteps

3 January 2015 9:00 am

In 1960 John Steinbeck set off with his poodle Charley to drive around the United States in a truck equipped…

Answers to ‘Spot the Booker Prize Winners’

3 January 2015 9:00 am

by Simon Drew

Answers to ‘Spot the Booker Prize Winners’

1 January 2015 3:00 pm

1. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002) 2. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998) 3. The Sea, The Sea by…

Answers to ‘Spot the Booker Prize Winners’

1 January 2015 3:00 pm

1. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2002) 2. Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (1998) 3. The Sea, The Sea by…

‘The Lion Queen’

Roll up, roll up! A history of the circus from Ancient Egypt to the present

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Nell Gifford joins a colourful troupe of acrobats, contortionists, lion-tamers, freaks and funambulists

Scenes from the garden of The Hope

The quirkiest garden book Roy Strong has read in years

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Incredulity is rarely a word that crosses my mind when it comes to garden writing. This genre can, of course,…

Seamus Heaney in 1996

Seamus Heaney: no shuffling or cutting — just turning over aces

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The impersonator — Rory Bremner, Steve Coogan — speaks, in different voices, to a single primitive pleasure centre in his…

After the trilogy (and the hurricane): the likeable return of Frank Bascombe

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The story of Frank Bascombe, a sports-writer turned estate agent but always a New Jersey homebody, has already taken Richard…

Wonder Woman: feminist symbol or the ultimate male fantasy?

13 December 2014 9:00 am

It’s always interesting when people succeed in two different arenas — like Mike Nesmith’s mum, who gave the world both…

From ‘The Temptation of Eve’: detail of glass from Ely Cathedral designed by Pugin, 1858

Cambridge, showcase for modernism (and how costly it is to fix)

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The Pevsner architectural guides are around halfway through their revisions — though it is like the Forth Bridge, and soon…

A treasure-trove of grisly Arab tales may appeal more to an Isis fighter than your average British reader

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The marvellous tales of the title are not just confined to the contents of this book, for the travels and…

Sunset Hails a Rising

13 December 2014 9:00 am

O lente, lente currite noctis equi! — Marlowe, after Ovid.   La mer, la mer, toujours recommencée. —Valéry.   Dying…

The undiscovered country: ‘Germany? Where is it?’, asked Goethe and Schiller in a collaborative poem. ‘I don’t know where to find such a place.’ Above: ‘Goethe in the Roman Campagna’, 1787, by Johann Tischbein, currently on show at the British Museum

German history is uniquely awful: that’s what makes it so engrossing

13 December 2014 9:00 am

As I grew up half German in England in the 1970s, my German heritage was confined to the few curios…

This ex-priest’s history of the gospels could unsettle the most faithful churchgoer

13 December 2014 9:00 am

When James Carroll was a boy, lying on the floor watching television, he would glance up at his mother and…

Spot the Booker Prize winning books

13 December 2014 9:00 am

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Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

13 December 2014 9:00 am

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