Books
Grace under pressure
Ask any England cricket fan in his fifties to name his favourite batsman and chances are he will say David…
What caused the first world war?
In pre-1914 cosmopolitan society, everyone seemed to be related — ambassadors as well as monarchs. But increased militarisation was fast obliterating old family ties, says Jane Ridley
Breakfast with Lucian, by Geordie Greig - review
According to the medical historian Professor Sonu Shamdasani, Sigmund Freud was not the best, nor actually the most interesting, psychoanalyst…
Clumsy and heavy, Goliath never stood a chance
When we think of David and Goliath, we think of a young man, not very big, who has a fight…
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking, by Anya von Bremzen - review
The early 1990s in Russia were hungry years. At the time, I was a student, too idle to barter and…
Donna Tartt can do the thrills but not the trauma
Donna Tartt is an expert practitioner of what David Hare has called ‘the higher hokum’. She publishes a long novel…
Queen Victoria, by Matthew Dennison - review
When Prince Albert died in 1861, aged 42, Queen Victoria, after briefly losing the use of her legs, ordered that…
What a coincidence
If you are going to read a novel that plays with literary conventions you want it written with aplomb. In…
The Empress Dowager was a moderniser, not a minx. But does China care?
For susceptible Englishmen of a certain inclination — like Sir Edmund Backhouse or George Macdonald Fraser — the Empress Dowager…
A Strong Song Tows Us, by Richard Burton - review
How minor is minor? ‘Rings a bell’ was more or less the response of two English literature graduates, now successful…
Darling Monster, edited by John Julius Norwich - review
It must have been awful for Diana and Duff Cooper to be separated from their only child during the war,…
Books and Arts
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Sour mixture
This book purports to be the story of the 2013 election. It is not clear why it makes that claim,…
England’s 100 best Views, by Simon Jenkins - review
Sam Leith is transported by the finest scenery in England
The Sunflowers Are Mine, by Martin Bailey - review
‘How could a man who has loved light and flowers so much and has rendered them so well, how could…
An Officer and a Gentleman, by Robert Harris - review
The Dreyfus Affair, the furore caused by a miscarriage of justice in France in 1894, is a source of perennial…
Meeting the Enemy, by Richard Van Emden; 1914, by Allan Mallinson - review
The Great War was an obscene and futile conflict laying waste a generation and toppling emperors. Yet here are two…
Guido Fawkes to Damian McBride: Who's spinning now?
When Gordon Brown eventually became aware that his Downing Street was about to be engulfed in the Smeargate scandal, he…
In it together? Matthew d'Ancona's book on the coalition is a huge letdown, says Peter Oborne
There are two ways of being a political journalist. One is to stay on the outside and try to avoid…
Anorexia, addiction, child-swapping — the Lake Poets would have alarmed social services
The last time the general reader was inveigled into the domestic intensities of the Wordsworth circle was by Frances Wilson…
Stephen King isn't as scary as he used to be, but 'Doctor Sleep' is still a cracker
Though alcohol withdrawal is potentially fatal, booze has none of the media-confected glitz of heroin (imagine Will Self boasting of…
on not answering
I was late for dinner not because I wanted to exercise restraint but because I wanted to hear them calling…
Licensed to feel: The new James Bond fusses over furnishings and sprinkles talc
First, an appalling admission: I have never read any of Ian Fleming’s Bond books. Nor have I read any of…
Making It Happen, by Iain Martin - review
Fred Goodwin’s descent from golden boy of British banking to ‘pariah of the decade’ would be the stuff of tragedy…
Walking in Ruins, by Geoff Nicholson - review
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
