Books
How to tell your Roman emperors apart
Rising professors do well to be controversial if they wish to be invited to contribute to mainstream media. But the…
A keepsake – and to-do list – of Europe’s greatest cathedrals
In his new book on Europe’s cathedrals, Simon Jenkins begins with the claim that the greatest among them are our…
The real surprise contained in a Kinder Surprise Egg
The Rosetta Stone has an awful lot in common with a Kinder Surprise Egg. Hear me out. The actual text…
Children’s books for all ages: the best of 2021
She’s done it again: J.K. Rowling has written a captivating children’s book. The Christmas Pig(Little Brown, £20) is about a…
A book trade romp: Sour Grapes, by Dan Rhodes, reviewed
Dan Rhodes’s career might be regarded as an object lesson in How Not to Get Ahead in Publishing. Our man…
Has nostalgia become the Greeks’ national disease?
Imagine a new take on the Greek myth of Pygmalion. A love-shy artist makes a woman out of marble who…
The 17th-century Huron chief Kondiaronk can still teach us valuable lessons
Ten years ago, David Graeber was a leading figure of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He and his fellow protesters…
Lost in the fog: The Fell, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
Novelists are leery about letting the buzzwords of recent history into their books. The immediate past threatens to upstage the…
Richard Needham takes a businesslike attitude to the Troubles
This memoir from Sir Richard Needham, 6th Earl of Kilmorey, businessman and former Northern Ireland minister, has a frank opening:…
Father Christmas battles through the Blitz
When the shrill air raid sirens blared their familiar warning cries over the city at 6.01 p.m. on 29 December…
Culture clash: Things We Don’t Tell the People We Love, by Huma Qureshi, reviewed
Apart from what the title tells us, these stories are about a fundamental difference in cultures. Huma Qureshi writes like…
Suspicious circumstances abound in the latest crime fiction
The old adage that everyone has a novel in them has a new version: anyone can write a thriller. Celebrity…
Who’s to blame if Britney Spears has been ‘devoured’ by celebrity?
All the questions around Britney Spears can be condensed into this one: who should we blame? For a long time,…
What I really said to Gordon Brown: Field Marshal Lord Guthrie sets the record straight
A headline in the Mail on Sunday, taken up eagerly by the BBC’s Todayprogramme, claimed recently: ‘The SAS is getting…
Glasnost merely confirmed Russia’s deep-seated suspicion of democracy
Thirty years ago the Soviet Union was guttering to its close. Those of us who were there remember the exhilarating…
A scrapbook of sketches: James Ivory’s memoir is slipshod and inconsequential
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…
Compassion and a gift for friendship are touchingly evident in Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days
It has to be one of the most extraordinary stories of lockdown — how Tom Hanks’s assistant Sooki Raphael, undergoing…
How Noddy and Big Ears conquered the world
Love her or loathe her, Enid Blyton and the safe, sunny world she cleverly marketed will remain a publishing phenomenon, says Sam Leith
There is nothing cosy about Penelope Lively
At one time, Penelope Lively was routinely shortchanged by critics. Her protagonists are often middle-class professionals — historians, archeologists, scriptwriters…
Why I was labelled a bitch: Joan Collins remembers the old Hollywood days
Readers of this magazine will have enjoyed Joan Collins’s diaries, and her Past Imperfect was one of the funniest showbiz…
A celebration of natural wonders: the best of the year’s art books
If one of the purposes of art is to help us see the world around us, then Sebastião Salgado’s photographs…
A broken nation: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, by Wole Soyinka, reviewed
One of the best episodes in Wole Soyinka’s third novel (his first since 1973) takes place not in Nigeria but…
In defence of capitalism – ‘the greatest engine of human progress ever invented’
For all its faults and foibles, its busts and bailouts, modern market capitalism demonstrates a remarkably bullish resilience. We don’t…
Is Christianity about to end in the place it began?
Janine di Giovanni’s book begins in a Paris apartment during the first lockdown. She’s at a friend’s home, which she…
Roberto Calasso’s retelling of the Hebrew Bible is both exasperating and beguiling
Robert Alter 18 December 2021 9:00 am
Robert Alter is both exasperated and beguiled by Roberto Calasso’s intellectual potpourri