Books
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Ghost Hands
Sant’Apollinaire Nuovo, Ravenna Your hands brush marble, feel impelled To touch where crisp cold tesserae Compose a fine array Of…
Wolves in the Lake District get everyone’s pheromones going
Locate. Stalk. Encounter. Rush. Chase. The pace of Sarah Hall’s fifth novel follows the five stages of a wolf hunt…
Stolen kisses and naked girls: there is much to wonder about in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland
A.S. Byatt explores the dark alternatives to innocence in Lewis Carroll’s deeply disturbing looking-glass world
A rebellion among Rugby schoolboys proved perfect training for its ringleader in putting down a Jamaican slave-rising in later life
The public schools ought to have gone out of business long ago. The Education Act of 1944, which promised ‘state-aided…
A lost American classic to rival anything by Faulkner
It’s rare that granitic and iron-jawed prose is also enveloping and warm, but that’s just one of the many enticing…
Leonid Yakobson: the greatest ballet genius you’ve never heard of
On YouTube there’s a brief dance video of a Viennese waltz so enchanting that not even Fred and Ginger in…
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
The knives come out of the cabinet in Churchill’s wartime government
Coalitions, as David Cameron has discovered, are tricky things to manage. How much more difficult, then, was it for Winston…
Baiting the trap with CHEESE: how we fooled the Germans in the second world war
Second world war deception operations are now widely known, particularly those which misled the Germans into thinking that the D-Day…
A mad menage — and menagerie - in Mexico: the life of Leonora Carrington in fictional form
Leonora Carrington is one of those jack-in-the-boxes who languish forgotten in the cultural toy cupboard and then pop up every…
Lesley Blanch: a true original on the wilder shores of exoticism
Lesley Blanch (1904–2007) will be remembered chiefly for her gloriously extravagant The Wilder Shores of Love, the story of four…
Things fall apart in Denis Johnson’s latest novel of madness and anarchy in Sierra Leone
‘I’ve come back because I love the mess. Anarchy. Madness. Things falling apart.’ The lines belong to Roland Nair, one…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting, très debonaire. This…
Miranda July may be a film director, performance artist, sculptor and designer — but she is no novelist
Miranda July is a funny and brilliant film director, performance artist, sculptor and smartphone app designer. In 2005, she won…
Dominic Cummings (who ought to know) is not impressed by Michael Barber, Tony Blair’s former adviser and self-styled ‘delivery man’
In 2001, Tony Blair took Sir Michael Barber from his perch as special adviser in the Department for Education and…
John Maynard Keynes: transforming global economy while reading Virginia Woolf
To the 21st-century right, especially in the United States, John Maynard Keynes has become a much-hated figure whose name is…
Books and arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting,très debonaire. This could…
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting,très debonaire. This could…
Dickens’s dark side: walking at night helped ease his conscience at killing off characters
James McConnachie discovers that some of the greatest English writers — Chaucer, Blake, Dickens, Wordsworth, Dr Johnson — drew inspiration and even comfort from walking around London late at night
Love child or bastard: the lottery of being born on the wrong side of the blanket
My father was handed over a shop counter when he was a day old. His aunt had tried to pass…
Life in the LA ghetto was nasty, brutish and short — until one brave detective took on the gangs
Los Angeles ghetto life — thrashed, twisted and black — is not a world that most Americans care to visit.…
