Books
God, aliens and a novel with a mission
They say never work with children and animals. They could just as well say don’t write about aliens and God.…
Forget Poirot, Holmes or Marlowe: there is nothing urgent or even logical about Chilean detective work
If nothing else, a private investigator who has learned his trade from the works of Simenon stands out from the…
An armchair voyeur gets a glimpse into Nicky Haslam’s vast address book
Phaidon pioneered the modern art-book in 1936. The formula was: large format, fine production, exceptional plates, and essays by the…
It’s the Stupid, stupid
Ironic Capitalisation of That Which You Do Not Like is apparently A Thing. You’ll forgive me for employing this Irritating…
Everything is merde
For the Figaro journalist and TV commentator Eric Zemmour, whose Le Suicide français has been topping the bestseller lists in…
A choice of humorous books
Nancy Mitford would not call them ‘toilet books’, that’s for certain. Loo books? Lavatory books? One or two people I…
Title Stories: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
The post Title Stories: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov appeared first on The Spectator. Got something to add? Join the…
Everything is merde
For the Figaro journalist and TV commentator Eric Zemmour, whose Le Suicide français has been topping the bestseller lists in…
A choice of humorous books
Nancy Mitford would not call them ‘toilet books’, that’s for certain. Loo books? Lavatory books? One or two people I…
Title Stories: The Seagull by Anton Chekhov
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Paul Johnson on Henry Kissinger, Susan Hill on David Walliams, Julie Burchill on Julie Burchill: Spectator books of the year
Plus choices from Mark Amory, A.N. Wilson, Thomas W. Hodgkinson, Roger Lewis, Jonathan Mirsky, Jeremy Clarke, Stephen Walsh, Ferdinand Mount, Ysenda Maxtone Graham, Wynn Wheldon, Stephen Bayley, Jonathan Rugman, Alan Judd, Patrick Marnham, Richard Davenport-Hines, Michela Wrong, Byron Rogers, Sofka Zinovieff and Andrew Taylor
From water-dwelling sponges to face-eating hyenas: the whole of life is in this book
‘The meaning of life’, announces Simon Barnes in the opening pages of his new book, ‘is life, and the purpose…
Wendy Cope on hating school, meeting Billy Graham and enduring Freudian analysis
A surprise! I took this book from its envelope expecting a fresh collection of Wendy Cope’s poems, and opened it…
This autumn's crime fiction visits the Isle of Man and enters the Big Brother house
Phil Rickman isn’t unusual among crime writers for mingling supernatural elements with earthly crimes. What makes him different is his…
The king who blamed everything that went wrong on God
Geoffrey Parker is a product of Nottingham and Christ’s College Cambridge, and I think was once a pupil of the…
Nicky Haslam on sharing a lover with Elsa Schiaparelli and the endearing punk of Vivienne Westwood
A comet streaked into France in the 1930s, its fallout sending the staid echelons of haute couture into a tailspin.…
A book about the ordinary nothings that, in the end, are everything
We live in a world in which nuance is trampled on and cannot survive. Is that true? I don’t know.…
I guarded Rudolf Hess
I had the misfortune to meet Lord Richards on probably the darkest day of his 42 years in the military.…
Title Stories: Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas
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A misery memoir from Alan Cumming that's surprisingly thoughtful
Misery loves company. Anyone who doubts this old adage should pop into their local bookshop, because besides celebrity chefs and…
Goodman’s Garden
Where did they all go? Thickets of love and pain rustle in a dry light and skeins of corvidae traipse…
From head-shrinking to skull-seeking: a history of the severed head
A severed head, argues Frances Larson in her sprightly new book, is ‘simultaneously a person and a thing… an apparently…
Europe in 60 languages
So Basque is an ergative language! Well, I never. I couldn’t have told you that a week ago. I even…
A brown-noser's history of the Old Vic and National Theatre
The moment Waterloo Bridge was planned across the Thames, a new theatre to serve the transpontine coach trade was inevitable.…
In search of dead men's bones
Skulls, femurs, ribs, pelvises, piled on top of each other in a chaotic heap: this, Denise Inge discovered, was what…
