Books

Bridge on the 3,798-metre-high Baroghil Pass, leading from Badakhshan in Afghanistan to northern Pakistan

In the steppes of the ancients: travels on the Silk Road

13 December 2014 9:00 am

It is difficult to fault this remarkable volume. The publishers have created a book of quality with stunning illustrations and…

Jacques-Louis David, emboldened by Madame Vigée Le Brun, included a smiling display of teeth in his portrait of Madame de Sériziat (1795)

How the smile came to Paris (briefly)

13 December 2014 9:00 am

In 1787 critics of the Paris Salon were scandalised by a painting exhibited by Mme Vigée Le Brun. The subject…

All you’ll ever need to know about the history of England in one volume

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Here is a stupendous achievement: a narrative history of England which is both thorough and arresting. Very few writers could…

Juliet Townsend (1941-2014)

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Mark Amory remembers a close friend and trusted reviewer

Hiding in Moominland: the conflicted life of Tove Jansson

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Tove Jansson’s father was a sculptor specialising in war memorials to the heroes of the White Guard of the Finnish…

In the Emergency School

13 December 2014 9:00 am

We were registered as a form, and for the first day Left unsupervised alone in a distant room With empty…

Grimms’ fairy tales: the hardcore version

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Child murder, domestic slavery, abusive families, cannibalism and intergenerational hatred — what could be better for the festive fireside than…

Enough, comrades, it’s time to give Transnistria a break

Transnistria: a breakaway republic of a breakaway republic

13 December 2014 9:00 am

Transnistria is not an area well-served by travel literature or, really, literature of any kind. The insubstantial-seeming post-Soviet sandwich-filling between…

Nomad camp in the Wakhan, Afghanistan, from The History of Central Asia

Books and arts

13 December 2014 9:00 am

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Under the bed

13 December 2014 9:00 am

The bogeyman of the ASIO agent under the bed has long been an obsession of the Left, and judging from…

Spot the Booker Prize winning books

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

The post Spot the Booker Prize winning books appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the discussion…

Juliet Townsend (1941-2014)

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

A new literary editor looks among his acquaintance for potential reviewers. There was no one I approached more confidently in…

Sunset Hails a Rising

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

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

In the Emergency School

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

We were registered as a form, and for the first day Left unsupervised alone in a distant room With empty…

Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

The post Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join…

Spot the Booker Prize winning books

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

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

Juliet Townsend (1941-2014)

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

A new literary editor looks among his acquaintance for potential reviewers. There was no one I approached more confidently in…

Sunset Hails a Rising

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

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

Title stories: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie

11 December 2014 3:00 pm

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

An unholy cross between Big Ben and Las Vegas, the Makkah Royal Clock Tower stands on an estimated 400 sites of cultural and historical importance

Mecca: from shrine to shopping mall

6 December 2014 9:00 am

The Saudis, official custodians of Islam’s holiest place, have bulldozed its historical sites, perverted its religion and turned Mecca into one vast shopping mall, says Justin Marozzi

Wine tasting in 19th-century Austria

Not a barrel of laughs: a history of hogsheads, kegs and puncheons

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Few people, perhaps, will immediately seize on this title as just the thing for a relative’s Christmas, even if their…

Your immune system’s war isn’t Saving Private Ryan — it’s Homeland

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Before I read this book, I imagined the immune system as a defensive force, like the Germans on the beaches…

What Hanif Kureishi learned from being robbed by his accountant

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Have you ever met a sane accountant? I ask, because one of the more striking sentences in A Theft runs:…

Haunted by the Holocaust: Three novellas by Patrick Modiano

6 December 2014 9:00 am

Earlier this year Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for the art of memory with which he has…

Title Stories: The Woman in White

6 December 2014 9:00 am

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