Books
The serious rows at Marvel Comics
If Marvel characters seem dysfunctional, just look at their creators, says Dorian Lynskey
From cheap sex comedies to gritty brilliance: British culture comes of age
As readers of a certain age will realise, Looking for a New England derives its title from ‘A New England’,…
Imagining a future for John Keats — the novelist
Keats is a much stranger poet than we tend to realise – who shocked his first readers by his vulgarity and gross indecency, says Philip Hensher
Social mobility has become a meaningless mantra
‘Whatever your background,’ Margaret Thatcher told the Sun’s readers in 1983, she was determined that ‘you have a chance to…
A phoenix from the ashes: 17th-century London reborn
Tragically, the current pandemic lends this sparkling study of London in its most decisive century a grim topicality — for…
Betrayal was a routine business for George Blake
Kim Philby once remarked to the journalist Murray Sayle that ‘to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged’. Kim,…
A toxic atmosphere: Slough House, by Mick Herron, reviewed
Mick Herron has been called ‘the John le Carré of his generation’ by the crime writer Val McDermid, and in…
A bubo-busting muckfest: Hurdy Gurdy, by Christopher Wilson, reviewed
In an essay for Prospect a few years back the writer Leo Benedictus noticed how many contemporary novels used what…
How did Robert Maxwell fool most of the people most of the time?
‘Everyone’s heard of Ghislaine Maxwell,’ says the blurb for Power: The Maxwells, a podcast series launched last month. ‘But there’s…
My mother’s secret life was a Dickensian horror story
What happens to a child raised without love? This is the agonising question that the American lawyer Justine Cowan braces…
Queer Teen Craze
It is remarkable how quickly the cause of transgenderism has moved from being a strange object at the back of…
Lives unlived: Light Perpetual, by Francis Spufford, reviewed
Francis Spufford was already admired as a non-fiction writer when he published his prize-winning first novel, On Golden Hill, in…
A bored business administrator in Leicester puts the intelligence services to shame
In the summer of 2012, a man was walking near Jabal Shashabo, a Syrian rebel enclave, when he spotted a…
Memory – and the stuff of dreams
Can you remember when you heard about 9/11? Chances are you’ll be flooded instantly with memories — not only where…
One of the last men-only jobs left — offshore in the North Sea
As a child, I loved the Ladybird ‘People at Work’ series. I had the ones on the fireman, the policeman,…
A beastly cold country: Britain in 1962
Like this author, I was happily snowbound at a beloved grandparent’s house during the big freeze that began on Boxing…
Holding the Empire responsible for the state of modern Britain is becoming commonplace
It seems to have become a virtual orthodoxy of the academic and publishing worlds that history and fiction now have…
Rescuing Elizabeth Barrett Browning from her wax-doll image
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an ambitious, passionate, determined woman – not the sad-eyed invalid of legend, says Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Will the next generation wonder what the fuss over Brexit was about?
Robert Tombs’s new book is not long: 165 pages of argument, unadorned by maps or images. But brevity is good,…
The art of the short story: what we can learn from the Russians
Viv Groskop takes a masterclass in the art of the short story
God’s many mansions: a guide to the world’s greatest churches
The surroundings of the Crimea Memorial Church in Istanbul are ‘little better than a dump’, wrote the British embassy chaplain…
The Generic Asian Man: Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu, reviewed
Of the handful of things we can establish about Willis Wu, the protagonist of Charles Yu’s second novel, the most…
On the cowboy’s trail: Powder Smoke, by Andrew Martin, reviewed
Detective Inspector Jim Stringer is back. This is a York novel, or rather a Yorkshire crime novel. The LNER railway…
A burnt-out case: the many lives of Dr Anthony Clare
Those who best remember Dr Anthony Clare (1942-2007) for his broadcasting are firmly reminded by this biography that we didn’t…
Cruelty and chaos in Karachi
Karachi, Pakistan’s troubled heart, is known to cast a seductive spell over residents and visitors alike. In Karachi Vice, the…
