Books
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…
Why the mid-1960s was the golden age of pop music
On a Monday evening in May 1966, Paul McCartney and John Lennon visited a nightclub called Dolly’s in Jermyn Street.…
A glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith through her diaries and notebooks
Through her diaries and notebooks we finally catch a glimpse of the real Patricia Highsmith, says Christopher Priest
Unexplained connection
Why would an Australian lawyer and historian write a book explaining how the English and American Revolutions produced the American…
Why has medicine been so slow to improve over the centuries?
Medicine was founded by Hippocrates in the 5th century BC. Doctors continued to study the Hippocratic texts into the 19th…
Lockdown creations: the best of the year’s cookery books reviewed
‘I may, one day, stop making notes and writing down recipes,’ Nigel Slater says in A Cook’s Book (Fourth Estate,…
Anthony Holden is nostalgic for journalism’s good old bad old days
After a career spanning 50 years, 40 books and about a million parties, Anthony Holden has written a memoir. Based…
The life of René Magritte was even more surprising than his art
René Magritte’s life, so outwardly respectable, was as full of surprises as his art, says Philip Hensher
A feast for geeks: The Making of Incarnation, by Tom McCarthy, reviewed
Since the publication of his debut, Remainder, Tom McCarthy has established himself as the Christopher Nolan of literary fiction: his…
A macabre meditation on psoriasis
Obsessed with purity and pain, the boundaries of blame and innocence, Skin is a fascinating meditation on psoriasis, the long-lasting…
With Elizabeth Stuart as monarch, might the English civil war have been avoided?
Many girls dream about their favourite princesses. Elizabeth Stuart, a princess herself, took this fantasy a step further and modelled…
How Shane MacGowan became Ireland’s prodigal son
I once stood on a Dublin street with Shane MacGowan and watched little old ladies who can’t ever have been…
How fears of popery led to a century of turmoil in ‘the land of fallen angels’
Stuart England did not do its anti-Catholicism by halves. In the late 1670s and early 1680s, a popular feature of…
Were the Ottoman Turks as European as they thought themselves?
This is the best of times to be writing history, since so much of what has been taken for granted,…
More penny dreadful than Dickensian: Lily, by Rose Tremain, reviewed
Rose Tremain’s 15th novel begins with a favoured schmaltzy image of high Victoriana: it is a night (if not dark…
BOOKS OF THE YEAR II — a further selection of the books chosen by our regular reviewers
A further selection of the books enjoyed by some of our regular reviewers in 2021
The true superhero is Douglas Wolk – who has read through 27,000 Marvel comics
In March 1963, the Fantastic Four had a fractious encounter with Spider-Man and a dust-up with the Hulk — a…
Elephants walk on tiptoes — but can they dance? This year’s stocking-fillers explore such puzzles
It’s almost a shock to admit it, but this year’s gift books aren’t bad at all. It’s even possible that,…
It’s a wonder any of our great country houses survived the 20th century
One of Adrian Tinniswood’s recent books, The Long Weekend, is a portrait of country house life in the interwar years.…
Satire misfires: Our Country Friends, by Gary Shteyngart, reviewed
It is, as you’ve possibly noticed, a tricky time for old-school American liberals, now caught between increasingly extreme versions of…
Rationality is like a muscle that needs constant flexing
In the 1964 film My Fair Lady after Colonel Pickering has secured the help of an old friend to pull…
The slippery stuff of slime: should we loathe it so much?
As humans, we are supposed to have an aversion to slime. It should repel us. Objects and organisms that might…
The unfamiliar Orwell: the writer as passionate gardener
Sara Wheeler 27 November 2021 9:00 am
This is a book about George Orwell’s recognition that desire and joy can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian…