Books
The ‘art’ of stealing presented as English heritage
The publicity blurb about the two unpleasant criminals whom this dismal book romanticises says that they are ‘continuing their ancestors’…
An Austenesque Aga saga with hints of postmodernism
Lovely, gentle Isabel, just 40, makes masks. Her husband Dan, erstwhile ‘student of the Classics’ and playwright manqué, is ‘bored…
Which comes first — the chicken or the pig?
Here are two parallel books, both by Americans, both 260 pages (excluding indexes) long, both using ‘likely’ as an adverb.…
The forgotten army: abandoned by the British to the horrors of Partition
It is often said that cricket was ‘a game invented by the English and played by Indians’, and every so…
The long shadow over China’s only children
This book starts with a Chinese boy so privileged and pampered that, at 21, he can’t open his own suitcase,…
Roger Federer helped me through my nervous breakdown, says William Skidelsky
Good writing about sport is rare — and good writing about tennis is that much rarer — so it’s conspicuous…
While I was wining and dining bands, the future of the music industry was stealing CDs in North Carolina
In 1994 I was working in marketing at London Records, a frothy pop label part-owned by the Polygram Group —…
The dark side of Delhi
When Sara discovers that her husband died in India, rather than being killed in Afghanistan as she was told, she…
What can we do with Dartmoor?
In his poem ‘Eden Rock’, Charles Causley conjures up a dreamy memory of a childhood picnic ‘somewhere beyond Eden Rock’.…
Message
A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…
Message
A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…
Message
A tiny fly is moving over the page of my dull book this sultry evening, and it is my conceit…
Queen Victoria was born to be a novelist — this book proves it
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
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?
I must be an idiot for pointing out the failings of a novel that’s so screamingly, self-denouncingly about failure. Steve…
Oscar Wilde, Christine Keeler, Ivor Novello and Isambard Kingdom Brunel make unexpected companions on the Great Western
Readers who have put in some time on the railways may remember the neat, brush-painted graffiti that appeared in 1974…
Frank Auerbach: frightened of heights, dogs, driving, swimming — but finding courage through painting
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
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
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
‘It is the task of a Patton or a Napoleon to persuade soldiers that bits of ribbon are intrinsically valuable.…
Bartók would have made history even if he’d never composed a note
‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian…
Palermo: city of jasmine and dark secrets
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
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
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
Host
In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…
