Books
Why should advocating sexual restraint be ridiculed?
Louise Perry is on a mission: ‘It wasn’t enough just to point out the problems with our new sexual culture,’…
The great breakfast dilemma: should baked beans be part of a full English?
A popular pastime in Britain is to post one’s breakfast on social media for strangers to pass judgment on bacon…
Putin’s mistake was to discard the velvet glove
To study international politics since the turn of the century has been, in large part, to study the changing nature…
All about my mother: Édouard Louis’s latest family saga
Shunned by his father and his peers because of his homosexuality, Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule in 1992) left his village…
Is Gone with the Wind to blame for Trumpism?
Selfish, acquisitive, ignorant and vain, Gone with the Wind’s heroine not only resembles Donald Trump – she may even be his role model, says Greg Garrett
How inoculation against smallpox became all the rage in Russia
The concept of vaccination evolved from 18th-century inoculation practices and many people contributed to the accretion of knowledge. This book…
At last, a book about James Joyce that makes you laugh
I do not think I am alone in confessing that I had read critical works on James Joyce before I…
Dangerous liaisons: Bad Eminence, by James Greer, reviewed
Vanessa Salomon is an internationally successful translator. Clever, beautiful, privileged – ‘born in a trilingual household: French, English and money’…
Michael Beloff QC drops names – but they’re not the ones we’re curious about
‘The law,’ according to W.S. Gilbert’s Lord Chancellor, ‘is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent’ and, by common consent,…
We could all once tell bird’s-foot trefoil from rosebay willowherb
‘There are a great many ways of holding on to our sanity amid the vices and follies of the world,’…
Where is Ruja Ignatova, the self-styled cryptoqueen, hiding?
This is a depressing book. It’s a reminder of everything that is sick, broken and generally maledicted about the human…
The conspiracy against women’s football
The moment before the fall of women’s football can be precisely dated. On Boxing Day 1920, Dick, Kerr Ladies FC…
The unimaginable horrors confronting the Allies in 1945
No one had prepared the Allied soldiers, as they began their invasion of the Reich early in 1945, for what…
People of little interest: MI5’s view of left-wing intellectuals
If MI5 had a Cold War file on you – paper in those happy days – it didn’t mean they…
The emperor as ruler of heaven and Earth
Geography, climate, economics and nationalism are often seen as decisive forces in history. In this dynamic, original and convincing book…
‘That little venal borough’: a poet’s jaundiced view of Aldeburgh
‘To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England,’ E.M. Forster declared in a radio broadcast in May 1941, but…
Ethel, Ella and all that jazz: the soundtrack of a Chicago childhood
Margo Jefferson’s Constructing a Nervous System compresses memoir and cultural criticism into one slim, explosive volume, and in doing so…
An immorality tale: Lapvona, by Ottessa Moshfegh, reviewed
Has there been a better novel this century than Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation? There might not…
We let Hong Kong down: Chris Patten on the end of colonial rule
After 13 years in parliament, rising star Chris Patten had the bad luck to be one of the few Tory…
Fish that swim backwards – and other natural wonders
With the technologies at our disposal, we can in fact now know what it’s like to be a bat, says Caspar Henderson
Piloting a Boeing Dreamliner can be less than dreamy
Mark Vanhoenacker dreams of my nightmares. Ever since he was a young boy, he fantasised about piloting airplanes. Ever since…
Connecticut connections: A Little Hope, by Ethan Joella, reviewed
A Little Hope, Ethan Joella’s debut novel, is about the lives of a dozen or so ordinary people who live…
Was Jane Morris a sphinx without a secret?
Jane Morris, the Pre-Raphaelites’ favourite model, remains as enigmatic as ever, says Frances Wilson
Berliners were punished twice – by Hitler and by the Allies
‘Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.’ Albert Einstein’s deft avoidance of the question put to…
What shape is the Treasury in now?
Don’t bring a bottle. Your chances of finding a party in full swing down those chilly corridors are close to…
