Books
Gift books for Christmas — reviewed by Marcus Berkmann
We have a fine crop of Christmas gift books this year, so good that some of them actually qualify as…
Where time stands still: a Himalayan pilgrimage
The region of Dolpo in Nepal forms part of a border zone between that country and China in the central…
Comforting brown food from the Domestic Goddess
Nigella Lawson is many things to many people: the perfect hostess, the TV star, the thinking man’s crumpet. To me…
A 13th-century guide to fraud and skulduggery
Eight centuries ago in Turkey, at a gathering of intellectuals, a Muslim sultan insisted that one of his courtiers write…
Short and sweet: Xstabeth, by David Keenan, reviewed
Aneliya, the Russian narrator of David Keenan’s enjoyably weird new novel, is worried about her dad. Tomasz’s modest music career…
Books of the year, chosen by our regular reviewers
Reviewers choose the books they have most enjoyed in 2020 – and a few that have disappointed them
Wistful thinking: Mr Wilder & Me, by Jonathan Coe, reviewed
Mr Wilder & Me is not in any way a state- of-the-nation novel — and thank goodness. Brilliant as Jonathan…
Demystifying the world of espionage
John le Carré once wrote sadly that he felt ‘shifty’ about his contribution to the glamorisation of the spying business.…
London’s 598 railways stations have made the capital what it is
I began this book waiting for a diesel train to Derby, under the windy, boxy, flat-roofed bit which one of…
Too much sound and fury in Christopher Nolan’s movies
In 2006 the director Christopher Nolan filmed an adaptation of one of my novels, written a decade and a half…
Lambs to the slaughter: the fiasco of the Dieppe Raid, August 1942
In carefree days which now seem so distant we used occasionally to take the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry. Docking after a long…
Kicking up a stink: Dead Fingers Talk, by William S. Burroughs, reviewed
William Burroughs was introduced to a British readership in November 1963, and the welcome he received was ‘UGH…’ The headline…
The humble biscuit has a noble history
Prue Leith traces the biscuit’s surprisingly colourful history
Aunt Munca’s murky past
Kiss Myself Goodbye. It sounds a bit like a William Boyd novel. It looks likea William Boyd novel, too: the…
Tom Bower pulls his punches with his life of Boris Johnson
The Prime Minister may have lost his bounce –but perhaps that’s no bad thing, says Lynn Barber
The gospel of separation according to Malcolm X
In late April 1962 Los Angeles police shot and killed an unarmed black man, Ronald X Stokes, during a disturbance…
Sarah Maslin Nir enjoys the rides of a lifetime
The appeal of a book called Horse Crazy risks being limited to those who are. Yet many moments in Sarah…
The scholars who solved the riddles in the sands
In 1835 the first two Egyptian antiquities were registered in the British Museum: a pair of red granite lions from…
Cyber apocalypse: The Silence, by Don DeLillo, reviewed
Elaborated over a writing career that spans half a century — a career crowned with every honour save the Nobel…
The power behind The Few: Rolls-Royce’s Merlin engine
Eighty years ago this summer Britain was facing its greatest moment of peril as Göring’s Luftwaffe attacked airfields, cities and…
Looking for love: Ghosts, by Dolly Alderton
Of all the successful modern female writers documenting their search for love, none has been as endearing as Dolly Alderton.…
We should never take our daily bread for granted
In the seventh and final chapter of this small but lingeringly powerful book, the author reveals his motivation for writing…
Ivan Morozov: the Russian businessman with a passion for the avant-garde
If you want to see the very best of Gauguin and Matisse, go east. That was the case in 1914…
A Jack Reacher travesty: The Sentinel, by Lee Child and Andrew Child, reviewed
So upsetting it would have been, for those of us who rate Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers so highly, if…
Portrait of the piss artist as a young man
Being the son of the revered John Olsen has often been intriguing, and sometimes difficult. Olsen, 92, is arguably Australia’s…
