Books
Business books aren't meant to cheer you up. But this one will
Economics is known as ‘the dismal science’, and certainly there have been — and indeed are — economists whose day…
To my father, solicitor to the landed gentry
If you were still alive You would be ninety-six tomorrow. I think of you most days. Just now, for example,…
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Autumn Shades
They start to say autumnal in the forecasts, And on the Northern Line the shifting panels Look bleached already. I…
To my father, solicitor to the landed gentry
If you were still alive You would be ninety-six tomorrow. I think of you most days. Just now, for example,…
To my father, solicitor to the landed gentry
If you were still alive You would be ninety-six tomorrow. I think of you most days. Just now, for example,…
Terror plots, threats to liberties, banks in crisis: welcome to Britain during the Napoleonic Wars
At the end of the 18th century, Britain shuddered in Boney’s shadow, living in constant expectation of invasion and occupation, says Nigel Jones
Michael Frayn’s new book is the most highbrow TV sketch show ever
Enough of big ideas and grand designs. Instead, here are 30 unusually small ideas from the giant pulsating brain of…
The Tudor sleuth who's cracked the secret of suspense
Some reviewers are slick and quick. Rapid readers, they remember everything, take no notes, quote at will. I’m the plodding…
Things to do: read this book
It would be perverse not to succumb to the temptation to write this review as a list. So, the first…
Was John Cleese ever funny?
Like many of my generation I was enchanted by the surrealistic irreverence of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, until I overheard…
Why the most important years in history were from 1347 to 1352
A group of retired Somerset farmers were sitting about in the early 1960s, so Ian Mortimer’s story goes, debating which…
What Shami regards as right isn’t necessarily what is right
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the civil rights group Liberty and omnipresent media personality, is on the cover of her book.…
Cronenberg attempts a teleportation from cinema to fiction. Cover your eyes…
Following his beginnings as a science-fiction horror director, David Cronenberg has spent the past decades transforming himself into one of…
The deep Britishness of fish and chips
During the D-day landings, members of the parachute regiment, finding themselves behind enemy lines at night, needed a way of…
A Jamaican civil war, with cameos from Bob Marley
There are many more than seven killings in this ironically titled novel — in fact very long — that starts…
Books and arts
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Does Boris Johnson really expect us to think he’s Churchill?
An eccentric, thoroughgoing genius, surfing every wave with a death-defying self-belief — Philip Hensher wonders who Boris Johnson can be thinking of