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In praise of Ming
At the end of this affectionate memoir of Sir Robert and Dame Pattie Menzies, Heather Henderson recognises some might see…
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Comfort in melancholy
Geoff Nicholson is the Maharajah of Melancholy. The quality was there in his novels, it was there in his non-fiction…
Books and Arts
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Colette’s France, by Jane Gilmour - review
Richard Davenport-Hines on the charmed, dizzy world of the multi-talented Colette
Music at Midnight, by John Drury - review
When John Drury, himself an Anglican divine, told James Fenton (the son of a canon of Christ Church) that he…
Monsieur le Commandant, by Romain Slocombe - review
There can be few characters in modern fiction more unpleasant than Paul-Jean Husson, the narrator in Romain Slocombe’s Monsieur le…
Six Bad Poets, by Christopher Reid - review
Is poetry in good enough health to be made fun of in this way? The irony is that this long,…
Move Along, Please, by Mark Mason - review
Mrs Thatcher was widely believed to have said that ‘any man over the age of 26 who finds himself on…
One Night in Winter, by Simon Sebag Montefiore - review
Simon Sebag Montefiore’s One Night in Winter begins in the hours immediately following the solemn victory parade that marked the…
When Britain Burned the White House, by Peter Snow - review
Peter Snow explains that he decided to look into this extraordinary story when he realised how few people knew about…
As Luck Would Have It, by Derek Jacobi - review
Alan Bennett once overheard an old lady say, ‘I think a knighthood was wasted on Derek Jacobi,’ and I know…
Do women want what they say they want?
What do women want? You might have thought the Wife of Bath had got this one sorted, but Daniel Bergner…
The rise of the politicians
This book expresses what is being more and more widely felt in English-speaking and other western countries: government is becoming…
Books and Arts
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To 'Flufftail' from 'Pinkpaws': The Animals is only good for celebrity-spotting
The correspondence between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy is good for celebrity-spotting but too cloyingly self-absorbed to be of wider interest, says D. J. Taylor
Marriage Material, by Sathnam Sanghera - review
Sathnam Sanghera, in his family memoir The Boy with the Topknot, heaped much largely affectionate contempt and ridicule on his…
Wilkie Collins by Andrew Lycett - review
In the outrageous 2010 press hounding of the innocent schoolteacher Christopher Jefferies over the murder of his young female tenant…
The Story of the Jews, by Simon Schama - review
The recorder of early Jewish history has two sources of evidence. One is the Bible. Its centrality was brought home…
Isaac & Isaiah, by David Caute - review
The scene is the common room of All Souls College, Oxford, in the first week of March 1963. It is…
What’s in a Surname, by David McKie - review
In South Korea, some 20 million people share just five surnames. Every one of Denmark’s top 20 surnames ends in…
Bizarre Cars, by Keith Ray - review
My various Oxford dictionaries define bizarre as eccentric, whimsical, odd, grotesque, fantastic, mixed in style and half-barbaric. By so many…
Royal Marriage Secrets, by John Ashdown-Hill - review
My brother Pericles Wyatt, as my father liked to say, is by blood the rightful king of England, the nephew…
Stage Blood, by Michael Blakemore - review
Stage Blood, as its title suggests, is as full of vitriol, back-stabbing and conspiracy as any Jacobean tragedy. In this…
