Books
All human life – and death – is here: the British parish church
As a skilled stonemason, Andrew Ziminski has dug deep into the fabric of countless churches and can explain every conceivable aspect, from baptismal fonts to gravestones
‘I like it when my pupils run the world’: a celebration of Jeremy Catto
The convivial Oxford don who died in 2018 is remembered by his many devoted students, who include bankers, barristers, diplomats and politicians as well as other distinguished historians
They weren’t all scheming poisoners: the maligned women of imperial Rome
Joan Smith criticises the distortions of Robert Graves in particular, whose villainisation of the empress Livia had no historical basis whatever
Wondrous treasure troves: the Jewish country houses of Europe
Among the greatest collectors was Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, whose furniture, paintings and objets at Waddesdon Manor rivalled those of many museums
Conspiracy theories are as old as witch hunts
To millions of people across America, Hillary Clinton sits atop a global network of satanic child-traffickers and is battling an…
From street urchin to superstar: the unlikely career of Al Pacino
Ellen Barkin, Al Pacino’s lover-cum-prime- suspect in his comeback movie Sea of Love (1989), once dismissed the artifice of the…
An otherworldly London: The Great When, by Alan Moore, reviewed
Is occult knowledge even possible in the age of the internet? If a recondite author obsessed you back in the…
Doctor in trouble: Time of the Child, by Niall Williams, reviewed
In the early 1960s, glimmers of change start to appear in the Irish ‘backwater’ parish of Faha. A smuggled copy…
Why must medieval mysticism be treated as a malady?
Medieval women – they were ‘just like us’. Except that they weren’t. Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife is the first popular…
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…
