Books
The enduring mystery of Goethe’s Faust
A.N. Wilson has never been afraid of big subjects. His previous books have tackled the Victorians, Charles Dickens, Dante, Jesus…
The stark, frugal world of Piet Mondrian
In September 1940 the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian arrived in New York, a refugee from war and the London…
Is it up to pop stars to save the planet now?
‘Walking by the banks of the Chao Praya on a breezy evening after a day of intense heat,’ writes Sunil…
The journalist’s journalist: the irrepressible Claud Cockburn
After a distinguished spell on the Times, Cockburn launched The Week in 1933, whose scoops on Nazi Germany became essential reading for politicians, diplomats and journalists alike
The court favourite who became the most hated man in England
Lucy Hughes-Hallett traces the brief, dramatic career of the handsome Duke of Buckingham – scapegoat for the early Stuarts’ extravagance and incompetence
A scorched Earth: Juice, by Tim Winton, reviewed
Winton’s teenage Australian protagonist is recruited by the sinister Service organisation in its crusade against the billionaires whose profiteering has cooked the planet
The rollercoaster ride of the world’s most reckless investor
The Korean-born Masayoshi Son – who lost $58.6 billion in 2000 – has a fascination with Napoleon, compares himself to Genghis Khan and is now reinventing himself as a futurist
The magic of carefully crafted words
A collection of essays, poems and fiction – ‘offcuts’ of a lifetime spent ‘working with a pen’ – marks Alan Garner’s 90th year
Whipping up a masterpiece: painters and their materials
Martin Gayford finds artists from Rembrandt to De Kooning mixing pigment, egg and oil together with all the skill of an accomplished chef
Mounting suspicion: The Fate of Mary Rose, by Caroline Blackwood, reviewed
Terror and distrust build in the Anderson family after a six-year-old girl is found murdered in a quiet Kent village
And still the colonial memoirs keep coming…
Peter Godwin’s third volume to date – of a family in various stages of decline after leaving their African homeland – is redeemed by its vivid evocations and erudition
The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain
The tabloids in particular stirred up fear and distrust with lurid stories of orgies, prostitution, drug-taking, political corruption, sinister concealment and susceptibility to blackmail
Three great minds explore the enigmas of the universe
It sounds like a Tom Stoppard play. A big-shot philosopher meets a big-shot boffin by way of a big-shot writer…
Panning for music gold: The Catchers, by Xan Brooks, reviewed
They were known as song catchers: New York-based chancers with recording equipment packed in the back of the van, heading…
Small-town mysteries: A Case of Matricide, by Graeme MacRae Burnet, reviewed
The gifted writer Graeme Macrae Burnet makes a mockery of the genres publishers impose on credulous readers. The author of…
Potato crisps and the British character
Pickled fish. Lemon tea. Cucumber. Doner kebab. Stewed beef noodles. Salted egg. Soft shell crab. Coney island mustard. Smoked gouda.…
Familiar scenarios: Our Evenings, by Alan Hollinghurst, reviewed
There’s a certain pattern to an Alan Hollinghurst novel. A young gay man goes to Oxford. He’s middle class and…
What do we mean when we talk about freedom?
When the Yale historian and bestselling author Timothy Snyder was 14, his parents took him to Costa Rica, a country…
The Christian view of sex contains multitudes
Lower Than the Angels (that is the condition of man, according to the psalmist and St Paul) is a book…
How can Ireland survive the seismic changes of the past three decades?
Historians in Ireland occupy a public role – unlike in Britain, where those with an inclination towards the commentariat usually…
What rats can teach us about the dangers of overcrowding
The peculiar career of John Bumpass Calhoun (1917-95), the psychologist, philosopher, economist, mathematician and sociologist who was nominated for the…
Politics as Ripping Yarns: the breathless brio of Boris Johnson’s memoir
Like a cross between Aeneas and Biggles, our intrepid hero travels the world, endures a thousand ordeals and makes himself father of the world’s greatest city
Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong
The 17th-century Elector of Saxony was notoriously vain and incompetent, and his reckless bid for the Polish crown was disastrous for all concerned
The heart-rending story of a child’s heart transplant
As nine-year-old Max resigns himself to death, a saviour arrives in the person of Keira, the victim of a tragic car crash, whose family opts to donate her organs
