Books
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
How ballet lessons transformed Princess Diana
The choreographer Anne Allan not only indulged the princess’s love of dance in weekly one-to-one sessions but also became her longstanding confidante
Life’s little graces: Small Rain, by Garth Greenwell, reviewed
An unnamed narrator, confined to hospital with a torn aorta, reminisces about his past life in Bulgaria, his love of poetry and the happy domesticity he shared with his partner
Whispers of ‘usurper’ at the Lancastrian court
When Henry Bolingbroke deposed his cousin Richard II, the populace at first united under his command. But was it a sign of divine retribution when his health dramatically deteriorated?
The misery of growing up in a utopian community
Susanna Crossman recalls her childhood of bullying and sexual molestation in an Orwellian dystopia supposedly devoted to freedom and equality
The contagions of the modern world
Disturbing trends in American healthcare, higher education, opioid use and crime come under scrutiny in Malcolm Gladwell’s sequel to The Tipping Point
Man of mystery and friend of the Cambridge spies
Details of Baron Talbot of Malahide’s attempts to clean up the mess left by his one-time mentor Guy Burgess are still conveniently exempted from the Freedom of Information Act
Voices from Gaza, historic city in ruins
Accounts of the current bombings and the daily search for fuel, food and water are by turns heartbreaking, terrified, resilient and defiant – and cling to the hope of a peaceful future
A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin
The hare-raising experience that changed my life
When Chloe Dalton adopts an abandoned new-born leveret, she soon finds her domestic routine radically altered
The Crimean War spelt the end of hymns to heroism and glory
Writing from opposite sides, Leo Tolstoy and William Howard Russell exposed the horror of conditions in a quagmire war which seemed to have no meaning
How the Rillington Place murders turned Britain into a nation of ghouls
With titillating newspaper coverage making John Christie’s trial a hot ticket, everyone seemed to want to peep behind the curtains of the house of horror – or even break in
The mystery of female desire deepens
When Gillian Anderson appealed to women to send her their sexual fantasies, she guaranteed strict anonymity – prompting a ‘torrent of unbridled passion from across the world’
When Britannia ceased to rule the waves
The final volume of N.A.M. Rodger’s magisterial history documents the gradual decline of Britain’s naval power as the empire disintegrated
A dark satanic cult: The Third Realm, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, reviewed
Knausgaard’s unsettling novel continues to explore previous themes in the series, including the strange phenomenon of the black metal music scene in socially balanced Norway
Starving street urchins sell their sisters in the chaos of Naples, 1944
When the Allies arrived in the city in the wake of the German retreat, they were shocked by the child prostitutes, shady commerce and downright miseria
The flowering of enlightenment under Oliver Cromwell
Far from being a puritanical wasteland, revolutionary Britain saw the foundation of the Oxford Circle, a group of philosophers and scientists who bridged the political divide of the times
