Books
Sex, secrets, and self-mortification: the dark side of the confessional
I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I admitted something of…
I used to like George Kennan. Then I read his diaries
George Kennan, the career diplomat and historian best known for his sensible suggestion that the United States try to resist…
From frankness to obsession - the novels of Francis King
Paul Binding reassesses the novels of Francis King, who died last year
Books and Arts
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The Artist Formerly Known As Whistler
Sam Leith on the exasperating, charismatic painter who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee
Hillary, Obama, Osama — and a hapless Bill
The actor David Niven was once badgered by the American columnist William F. Buckley to introduce him to Marc Chagall,…
When Israel was but a dream
‘On the night of 15 April 1897, a small, elegant steamer is en route from Egypt’s Port Said to Jaffa.’…
A family novel that pulls up the carpet before you're even in the door
I first mistook David Gilbert’s second novel for the sort of corduroy-sleeved family saga at which American writers excel. The…
Christianity is the foundation of our freedoms
If there is one underlying source from which all our other societal problems stem, it is surely this: we no…
The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion
This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of…
First novels: When romance develops from an old photograph
The intensely lyrical Ghost Moth is set in Belfast in 1969, as the Troubles begin and when Katherine, housewife and…
Books and Arts
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The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion
This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of…
The Old Man Comes Out With an Opinion
This long orchestral piece records a day the composer spent one summer meditating in Dibnah’s yard on the sounds of…
The enlightened king of Iraq
Alan Rush admires the humane, enlightened Faisal I, who fought with T.E. Lawrence and devoted his life to Arab rights, independence and unity
The man who gave the world (but not London) the glass skyscraper
Modern Architecture, capitalised thus, is now securely and uncontroversially compartmentalised into art history, its bombast muted, its hard-edge revolutions blurred…
Did Hurricane Katrina have an angel of mercy — or an angel of death?
On 28 August 2005 — Sheri Fink’s Day One — Hurricane Katrina reached New Orleans. The National Weather Service warned…
Where did the Right and the Left come from?
What is the origin of left and right in politics? The traditional answer is that these ideas derive from the…
How to get around South Africa's many boundaries
There are writers whose prose style is so fluid, so easy, the reader feels as though he has been taken…
The Scot who became more Canadian than the Canadians
When John Buchan was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1935, the country was deep in depression, the western provinces…
The Shock of the Fall is a worthy Costa Book of the Year
About 30 pages in and unable to find my bearings, I flipped to the end of this novel — well,…
Isabel Allende's Ripper doesn't grab you by the throat
Isabel Allende is not an author one usually associates with the thrillers about serial killers. Ripper, however, lives up to…
A&E
If this waiting is hellish, then the sick are limbo dancing; only those who are bent double, or on the…
Books and Arts
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'One warm night in June 1917 I became the man who nearly killed the Kaiser'
Daniel Swift 1 March 2014 9:00 am
The traditional story told about the first world war is that it changed everything: that it was the end of…