Books
Carnage on the home front: revisiting a forgotten disaster of the first world war
Philip Hensher on a little-known episode of first world war history when a munitions factory in Kent exploded in April 1916, claiming over 100 lives
Joseph Goebbels: Hitler’s ‘little doctor’ was devoted unto death
It is ironic that this weighty biography of Hitler’s evil genius of a propaganda minister is published on the day…
Virtual reality versus real reality: wisdom (and motorcycle maintenance) from Matthew Crawford
Bit of Kant, bit of Kierkegaard, bit of motorcycle maintenance. That’s one take on The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew…
What a Day
The blue sky is Sunni. The white clouds are Shia. The sun is happy. The shops are crowded. The planet…
A sombre Irish family saga — that glows in the dark
The Green Road is a novel in two parts about leaving and returning home. A big house called Ardeevin, walking…
Bicycling: the Marmite means of transport
Bicycles — in Britain, anyway — are the Marmite means of transport. I am among the bicycle-lovers, almost religious and…
Turing, Snow White and the poisoned apple
As a young student, the atheist Alan Turing — disorientated with grief over the death of his first love Christopher…
A passion for men and intrigue
Moura Budberg (1892–1974) had an extraordinary life. She was born in the Poltava region of Ukraine, and as a young…
Oscar Wilde and the marvellous boy
The prodigious brilliance, blaring public ruin, dismal martyrdom and posthumous glory of Oscar Wilde’s reputation are almost too familiar. The…
What a Day
The blue sky is Sunni. The white clouds are Shia. The sun is happy. The shops are crowded. The planet…
What a Day
The blue sky is Sunni. The white clouds are Shia. The sun is happy. The shops are crowded. The planet…
Saul Bellow’s fiction: a warehouse of stolen property
Saul Bellow’s lurid personal life — especially the triangular relationship with his wife and her lover — was the basis for his best work, says Craig Raine
The Ottoman empire: the last great casualty of the first world war
In a possibly apocryphal story, Henry Kissinger, while visiting Beijing in 1972 as Nixon’s national security adviser, asked Zhou Enlai,…
Racism, paedophilia and an inverted Snow White
God Help the Child, Toni Morrison’s 11th novel, hearkens back to two of her earliest. Like The Bluest Eye, it…
Sum total
Midnight to dawn adding one more to the serial tally, love and irritation carried over, borrowed and paid back, all…
Older, more angsty...and maybe wiser: the new face of growing up
We live in an age of generational turmoil. Baby-boom parents are accused of clinging on to jobs and houses which…
The world of Thessyros: an icky erotic fantasy
Lore has it that those viewing naughty books in the British Museum could once do so only with the Archbishop…
John Knox: like the blast of 500 trumpets
John Knox, Cranmer complained, was ‘one of those unquiet spirits, which can like nothing but that is after their own…
A lull in hostilities for Matthew Hervey
Allan Mallinson’s historical series concerning Matthew Hervey, the well-bred, thoughtful soldier, details a world where men are practical and not…
Antony Sher: a surprisingly reluctant actor
Understandably given its bulk, Antony Sher’s Falstaff in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent production of Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays…
Before we were famous: Tom Stoppard describes sharing a bedsit in Sixties London with Derek Marlowe
Tom Stoppard recalls bedsit days in Sixties London with his laconic friend Derek Marlowe, as they both embarked on a life of writing
Books & arts
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Local hero
Some of us habitually quote Orwell’s correct comparison of producing first-person prose to ‘dosing yourself with some … very deleterious…
Sum total
Midnight to dawn adding one more to the serial tally, love and irritation carried over, borrowed and paid back, all…
Sum total
Midnight to dawn adding one more to the serial tally, love and irritation carried over, borrowed and paid back, all…
