Books
At last: a calm, definitive account of the Armenian genocide
The atrocities suffered by an estimated one million Armenians in 1915 have been largely ignored by historians and officially denied by the Turks. It’s a centenary we can’t afford to neglect, says Justin Marozzi
The miracle of modern flight, by a 747 pilot with a poet’s sensibility
With Alpine wreckage still being sifted, this is either a very good or a very bad time to write about…
By Air
Astonishing to think That not so long ago First the Brothers Wright Then Louis Blériot Initiated flight. And strapped into…
Spoilt for choice: we are all curators now
As words commonly used to write about the visual arts become increasingly useful to advertisers, ‘to curate’ is becoming the…
Murder on Grub Street
Historical fiction is sometimes accused of being remote from modern concerns, a flight towards nostalgia and fantasy. It’s not an…
Between town and country
‘I nauseate walking; ’tis a country diversion. I loathe the country and everything that relates to it… Ah l’étourdie! I…
From diplomacy to disillusion with the Dalai Lama’s big brother
Can there ever have been another book in which one of the authors (Anne Thurston in this case) so effectively…
How the Romans went about their business
When Ovid was seeking ‘cures for love’, the most efficient remedy, he wrote, was for a young man to watch…
The theory wars have ended in stalemate
State-of-criticism overviews and assessments almost always strike a bleak note —the critical mind naturally angles towards pessimism — so it…
Women go off the rails
The Lost Child begins with a scene of 18th-century distress and dissolution down by the docks, as a woman —…
From Plotinus to Heidegger: a history of European thought in 48 pages
T.S. Eliot liked to recall the time he was recognised by his London taxi driver. Surprised, he told the cabbie…
The mysterious pleasure of Magnus Mills
Since his debut with the Booker-nominated The Restraint of Beasts in 1999, Magnus Mills has delighted and occasionally confounded his…
The Great Gatsby meets Fifty Shades of Oligarch
It’s surprising there haven’t been more novels drawing on London’s fascination with Russian oligarchs. But how to write about them…
Words
Late afternoon I speak to Mum on the phone; she’s sorting through her past, four hundred or so odd-sized photographs.…
Murder in a black Texas Arcadia
Mystery fans and writers are always looking for new locations in which murder can take place. Attica Locke has an…
A profile of the worlds’s most famous film director — with the most famous profile
‘Do it with scissors’ was Alfred Hitchcock’s advice for prospective murderers, though a glance at these two biographies reminds us…
Books and arts
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Ends of the earth
This story, second in a projected series (the first was The Thief Fleet, reviewed in these pages 8 December 2012),…
By Air
Astonishing to think That not so long ago First the Brothers Wright Then Louis Blériot Initiated flight. And strapped into…
Words
Late afternoon I speak to Mum on the phone; she’s sorting through her past, four hundred or so odd-sized photographs.…
By Air
Astonishing to think That not so long ago First the Brothers Wright Then Louis Blériot Initiated flight. And strapped into…
Words
Late afternoon I speak to Mum on the phone; she’s sorting through her past, four hundred or so odd-sized photographs.…
Plumber, taxi driver, mystic, musician — the many facets of Philip Glass
Philip Hensher infinitely prefers the words to the music of the maverick ‘minimalist’ composer
Moving heaven and earth: Galileo’s subversive spyglass
We live in an age of astronomical marvels. Last year Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft made a daring rendezvous with the comet…
Paying and praying: economics determined theology in the early Christian church
Peter Brown’s explorations of the mindsets of late antiquity have been educating us for nearly half a century, ever since…
