Books
How to avoid bankers in your nativity scene
With an eye to the blasphemy underlying some of the loveliest Renaissance painting, Honor Clerk will be choosing her Christmas cards more carefully this year
A badger eats, squats, thieves. But should we cull them?
Lord Arran was responsible for the bill to legalise homosexuality and a bill to protect badgers from gassing and terrier-baiting.…
How to get old without getting boring
When one notices the first symptoms of senile dementia (forgetting names, trying to remember the purpose of moving from one…
The Rothschilds, the Spenders, the Queen...
The novelist David Plante is French-Québécois by ancestry, grew up in a remote Francophone parish in Yankee New England and…
After the war — apocalypse
On 12 April 1945 the Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance. The atmosphere in Germany was apocalyptic, the Allied invasion…
Helen Fielding has lost her touch
To understand quite how disgruntled the reviews of the latest Bridget Jones diaries have been, you have to recall quite…
When 'drop-dead gorgeous' women actually dropped dead
No one watches Antiques Roadshow for the antiques. Instead we’re hanging on the punter’s reaction to his three-grand valuation. ‘It…
The Labour education secretary who could have been Britain's first woman PM
Decent, clever, charming, eloquent, hard-working, conscientious and terribly, terribly nice, Shirley Williams is one of Britain’s best-loved politicians. Mark Peel’s…
What makes someone the fastest man on earth?
What makes someone the fastest man on earth? The current tenant of the informal title held by such sporting icons…
Wild Tales: The book to make any Spectator reader weep
We all know that if you can remember the Sixties you weren’t really there. But Graham Nash, of the Hollies,…
'Bauklotzartigewortzusammensetzung'
Mark Twain had a notoriously thorny relationship with German, a language he gamely tried to conquer. His main beef was…
Is your dog enjoying more than physical exercise when you walk him?
Skip this book if you dislike dogs, or even if you are indifferent to them, or echo an acquaintance of…
What happens when journalists take sides
This is a curious book. Its title and the name of its publisher suggest that it is going to be…
Gower vs Boycott
Ask any England cricket fan in his fifties to name his favourite batsman and chances are he will say David…
Books and Arts
Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.
The world according to Bob
Apparently, Ellis believes that the year 2011 was as important as 1848. He never explains why, exactly. He seems to…
Grace under pressure
Ask any England cricket fan in his fifties to name his favourite batsman and chances are he will say David…
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…
