Books

Books of the year II: more choices of reading in 2023

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Recommendations from Mary Beard, Richard Ingrams, Sam Leith, Francis Wheen, Michela Wrong, William Dalrymple and many more

Not everything in the garden is lovely

4 November 2023 9:00 am

For as long as we have been human, powerful chemicals in plants have provided us with stimulants, analgesics – and the means of murder

The best of this year’s gardening books

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Authors reviewed include Jinny Blom on design, Jenny Joseph on scented plants, Maury C. Flannery on herbaria and Francis Pryor on his Fenland haven

Always carry a little book with you, and preserve it with great care, said Leonardo da Vinci

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Despite the digitisation of everything, many of us still choose to jot down thoughts and sketches on paper, and would be bereft without a notebook to hand

Heart of Darkness revisited: The Dimensions of a Cave, by Greg Jackson, reviewed

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Conrad’s classic is updated in this sinister tale of the US government’s involvement in a morally suspect virtual reality programme

The data-spew about Bob Dylan never ends

4 November 2023 9:00 am

In his latest volume of biography, Clinton Heylin spares us no details about Dylan’s misogyny and cranky obsessions during his almighty midlife crisis

The shocking truth about adulterated wine: it was delicious

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Provided it wasn’t actually poisonous, a beefed-up burgundy in the 1970s was often preferred to a weedy pure vintage pinot noir, says Rebecca Gibb

The misery of the Kindertransport children

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Wrenched from their parents and familiar surroundings, the young refugees found safety in Britain, but were tolerated rather than cherished, says Andrea Hammel

Why did Jon Fosse win the Nobel Prize for literature? It’s baffling.

4 November 2023 9:00 am

If Jon Fosse’s novels are experimental, they are experiments in exhausting banality, says Philip Hensher

Books of the year I: a choice of reading in 2023

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Recommendations from Andrew Motion, Jonathan Sumption, A.N. Wilson, Andrea Wulf, Peter Frankopan, Clare Mulley and many others. To be continued next week

In search of utopia: Chevengur, by Andrey Platonov, reviewed

28 October 2023 9:00 am

After crossing the vast steppe, Sasha Dvanov reaches an isolated town where the communist ideal appears to have been achieved. But at what cost?

The force of nature that drove Claude Monet

28 October 2023 9:00 am

A compulsion to paint en plein air would remain with the great Impressionist for life, as well as a questing need to find new ways to express what he saw and felt

Escape into the wild: Run to the Western Shore, by Tim Pears, reviewed

28 October 2023 9:00 am

A chieftain’s daughter flees an arranged marriage with the Roman governor of Britain, enlisting the help of slave and risking both their lives

Now imagine a white hole – a black hole’s time-reversed twin…

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Just as you can enter a black hole without leaving it, you can exit a white hole without entering it – but first you must understand what black holes really are

Ordinary women make just as thrilling history as great men

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Philippa Gregory investigates the lives of English women over 900 years – in sickness, health, business, war, prayer and prostitution

A Hindu Cromwell courteously decapitates hundreds of maharajas

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Through a mix of charm, diplomacy and coercion, Sardar Patel, Nehru’s uncompromising deputy, ensured that 565 princely states vanished from the map of India in 1947

Nina Stibbe’s eye for the absurd is as sharp as ever

28 October 2023 9:00 am

Back in London after an absence of 20 years, she’s no longer a literary outsider – but she’s still an acute observer, relishing the foibles of everyone she meets

Was the French Revolution inevitable?

28 October 2023 9:00 am

It was clear for decades in France that unrest was steadily building before public anger finally exploded in the spring of 1789, says Ruth Scurr

The hell of the antebellum South: Let Us Descend, by Jesmyn Ward, reviewed

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Teenage Annis and her enslaved mother endure beatings and rape as they are marched in chains to New Orleans to be sold to the latest brutal plantation owner

Thurston Moore relives the early days of Sonic Youth

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Reminiscing about his many friends and colleagues in the 1970s, Moore even finds good things to say about the Dead Boys and Sid Vicious

Satirical pulp: The Possessed, by Witold Gombrowicz, reviewed

21 October 2023 9:00 am

The 1939 Gothic pastiche which the author was at pains to distance himself from is now considered a delightfully devious work of Polish modernism

Anonymous caller: This Plague of Souls, by Mike McCormack, reviewed

21 October 2023 9:00 am

A man returns to his remote rural home after an absence – to be greeted not by his family but a sinister stranger on the telephone

The golden age of Dutch art never ceases to amaze

21 October 2023 9:00 am

Benjamin Moser reminds us of how freely painters borrowed each other’s subjects – and of how many of the greatest, including Rembrandt, died in poverty

‘The truth will make us free’: students on the march in post-war Europe

21 October 2023 9:00 am

The radical Rudi Dutschke in 1960s Berlin and the angry Johnny Rotten in 1970s London are just two of the charismatic figures in this history of youth activism

‘We are stuck like chicken feathers to tar’: Elizabeth Taylor’s description of the fabled romance

21 October 2023 9:00 am

The Burton-Taylor relationship was either one of the greatest love stories of all time or a suicide pact carried out in relentless slow motion