Books
A rainy day in the Highlands: Summerwater, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
There is an old Yorkshire tale about a prosperous town which, legend has it, once stood on the site of…
It’s time to leave Chopin in peace
There’s a scene early on in A Song to Remember — Charles Vidor’s clunky Technicolor film of 1945 — in…
Sport, for the English, has always been a defiant assertion of liberty
The history of English sport reflects a defiant people determined to protect their ancient prerogatives, says Alex Massie
Anatomy of fiction
By more than a mile the best book I have read during the pandemic is Tim Finch’s Peace Talks. It…
Who is telling the truth in Kate Reed Petty’s True Story?
This debut novel, which opens with ‘a high- school lacrosse party in 1999 and the rumour of a sexual assault,’…
The power of disinformation is that it’s so readily believed
On 27 November 1960 African and Indian diplomats visiting the UN in New York opened their mail to find a…
A toast to brotherhood: Summer, by Ali Smith, reviewed
The concluding novel of Ali Smith’s seasonal quartet is a family affair. Her intergenerational group of seeming strangers from the…
When the King of the Delta Blues came home — the family life of Robert Johnson
Whatever would Robert Johnson, self-styled King of the Delta Blues, have made of the Black Lives Matter movement? His was…
Magic and miasma: Mordew, by Alex Pheby, reviewed
Mordew ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, as Elton John nearly sang. If they escape the ravages…
The crusaders were not such incompetent zealots after all
One of the strange effects that modernist, progressive society has had on what the French Annales school would refer to…
When Paris was the only place to be
For more than 100 years Paris has been as much a symbol and a myth as a geographical reality. The…
Private tragedies: Must I Go, by Yiyun Li, reviewed
I can think of few novels as bleak or dispiriting as Yiyun Li’s 2009 debut, The Vagrants. Set in a…
The pleasures — and trials — of knowing Bruce Wannell
Bruce Wannell was by some way one of the most charismatic travellers I have ever met. Despite his almost complete…
The Big Tech firms are dividing the world between them
Cory Doctorow on the vast, impersonal forces manipulating our lives
Unreliable memories: Laura Laura, by Richard Francis, reviewed
Just imagine: you reach a certain age and you become your own unreliable narrator. Gerald Walker, the protagonist of Richard…
A darkling plain
Thirty years ago, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its puppet regimes unleashed widespread celebration, especially among their suppressed…
The heroic couple who defied Hitler
Philippe Sands on the heroic couple who defied Hitler and paid the ultimate price
It took two centuries to eradicate smallpox even after a vaccine was invented
In supposedly unprecedented times such as ours, there are compelling reasons to turn to the history of medicine. For hope,…
A tide of paranoid distrust: The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, by M. John Harrison, reviewed
Over the past 50 years, M. John Harrison has produced a remarkably varied body of work: a dozen atmospheric novels…
Demystifying freemasonry
The history of rubbish can be scholarship, but the history of scholarship is often rubbish. Hindsight diminishes earlier habits of…
Trump’s autocratic antics risk becoming the new normal
It is easy to forget the abnormality of Donald Trump’s presence in the White House. Before his election it would…
Part Beat, part hippy, part punk: the gay life of John Giorno
John Giorno, who died last year, was a natural acolyte: he needed a superior being to set him in motion.…
Poetic miniatures: A Lover’s Discourse, by Xiaolu Guo, reviewed
The novelist, memoirist and film-maker Xiaolu Guo writes with tremendous delicacy and nuance about migration, language, alienation, and love. A…
Madcap escapades: The All True Adventures (and Rare Education) of the Daredevil Daniel Bones, by Owen Booth, reviewed
The narrative of an adolescent travelling by water with an older companion, undergoing trials and ordeals, encountering scoundrels and villains,…
Stockholm syndrome: The Family Clause, by Jonas Hassen Khemiri, reviewed
Some faint hearts may sink at the idea of a torrid Swedish family drama peopled with nameless figures identified only…
