Books
The Dear Leader’s passion for films — and the real-life horror movie it led to
Ahead of last year’s release of The Interview, the Seth Rogen film about two journalists instructed to assassinate Kim Jong-un,…
When two young Britons go camping in Yosemite their lives are changed for ever
The title of A.D. Miller’s follow-up to his Man Booker shortlisted debut Snowdrops refers not to lovers but to two…
John Gray’s great tour-guide of ideas: from the Garden of Eden to secret rendition
You can’t accuse John Gray of dodging the big questions, or indeed the big answers. His new book The Soul…
Jean-Paul Sartre was perhaps the 20th century’s most famous thinker - if you can get beyond the verbiage
Thomas R. Flynn has written an avowedly ‘intellectual biography’ of Jean-Paul Sartre, which might seem fitting. Sartre was nothing if…
Books and arts
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Fizmer, feetings, flosh, blinter - enjoy these words and forget them immediately, advises Adam Nicolson
It is not only archaic or dialect terms in natural history we’re now missing in everyday speech, says Adam Nicolson. Soon children won’t even know what a dandelion is
How could anyone enjoy Cédric Villani’s ‘Birth of a Theorem’? I think I’ve worked it out
I’ve got a mathematical problem. Birth of a Theorem is by one of the great geniuses of today, a cosmopolitan,…
Sonic Youth turns sour: a tarnished marriage band
For 30 years Kim Gordon was one half of a cool couple in a cool band. With her husband Thurston…
Ogres, pixies, dragons, goblins... Kazuo Ishiguro’s first novel in ten years is a strange beast indeed
If you’d been asked at the beginning of the year whose new novel would feature ogres, pixies and a she-dragon…
Reading one book from every country in the world sounds like fun - until you come to North Korea
One day in 2011, while perusing her bookshelves, Ann Morgan realised her reading habits were (to her surprise) somewhat parochial.…
Michael Arditti is the Graham Greene of our time
Duncan Neville is an unlikely hero for a novel. Approaching 50, divorced and the butt of his teenage son Jamie’s…
The first Lord Dufferin: the eclipse of a most eminent Victorian
The first Marquess of Dufferin and Ava is largely forgotten today — rotten luck for the great diplomat of the…
Daffodils
These sprightly flowers are no cowards. They poke forth sun seeking heads, proudly proclaim when earth remains clenched in winter’s…
Books and arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
Daffodils
These sprightly flowers are no cowards. They poke forth sun seeking heads, proudly proclaim when earth remains clenched in winter’s…
Daffodils
These sprightly flowers are no cowards. They poke forth sun seeking heads, proudly proclaim when earth remains clenched in winter’s…
When the money ran out, so did the idealism in post-Revolutionary France
Why did the French Revolution go so wrong, descending into a frenzied bloodbath in just five years? Because by 1794 all trust had vanished, and the country had literally run out of cash, explains Ruth Scurr
Both lyricist and agitator: the split personality of Vladimir Mayakovsky
Why increase the number of suicides? Better to increase the output of ink! wrote Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1926 in response…
‘Another terrible thing...’: a novel of pain and grief with courage and style
Nobody Is Ever Missing takes its title from John Berryman’s ‘Dream Song 29’, a poem which I’d always thought related…
Murder in the dunes: the ‘26 Martyrs’ of Baku and the making of a Soviet legend
In the pre-dawn hours of 20 September 1918, a train, its headlamp off, heading eastwards out of Kransnovodsk on the…
Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, Elvis, Bob Dylan - all the greats ultimately owe their fame to the faceless ‘record men’
The crucial thing to remember about the music business is that it’s a business. If you happen to be creating…
Emer O’Toole is a joyless bore compared with my heroine Caitlin Moran, says Julie Burchill
Looking at the brightly coloured front cover of this book, I felt cheerful; turning it over and seeing the word…
The gripping story of the failed NKVD officer who fooled the FBI and the CIA
This is not quite another story about a man who never was. But it is about a man who certainly…
All roads lead to Blackpool in Andrew O’Hagan’s latest novel, The Illuminations
The illuminations of Andrew O’Hagan’s fifth novel are both metaphysical and mundane. In the course of its taut plot, they…
Don’t buy The Glass Cage at the airport if you want a restful flight, warns Will Self
Will Self 28 February 2015 9:00 am
Nicholas Carr has a bee in his bonnet, and given his susceptibilities this might well be a cybernetic insect, cunningly…