Books
Where are the scents of yesterday? Entire countries have lost their distinctive smell
Michael Bywater wonders why the existence of smell still seems such a guilty secret
Iceland is bursting with cabinets of curiosities
Competition is stiff among museums in Iceland. The Phallological Museum in Húsavík, devoted to the penis, stands tall in a…
The shape of things to come – from artificial wombs to suicide coffins
It wasn’t until half way through Jenny Kleeman’s Sex Robots and Vegan Meat that I was able to put my…
Base politics
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York moved to the lectern. It was the Cow Palace in San Francisco in…
Bedwetter’s lament
The trouble with political memoirs is that it’s very hard to get the balance right between the book-length version of…
The Sixties vibe: Utopia Avenue, by David Mitchell, reviewed
There aren’t many authors as generous to their readers as David Mitchell. Ever since Ghostwritten in 1999, he’s specialised in…
How far can we trust the men in lab coats?
Research has always been susceptible to fraud, but regulations are now much tighter than they were, says David Wootton
Saying yes slowly is what’s hampering progress today
One of my long-held beliefs is that evolutionary biology should be taught extensively in schools. There may be some objections…
The famous cities of the ancient world were surprisingly small and fragile
Greg Woolf didn’t know his book would come out during an urban crisis. Thanks to coronavirus, Venice’s population, for example,…
Spotting the mountweazels: The Liar’s Dictionary, by Eley Williams, reviewed
There is a particular sub-genre of books which are witty and erudite, comic and serious and often of a bibliophilic…
Children’s books provide the perfect escape from coronovirus
The lockdown we have been enduring has at times felt drawn from the pages of a children’s book. The eerie…
Decency personified
The life of Paul Ramsay shows that business people don’t have to be ruthless to succeed. Many will find this…
It was Bevin, not Bevan, who was the real national treasure
Alan Johnson pays tribute to Ernest Bevin, a towering political figure too often forgotten
Monuments to the second world war are looking increasingly dodgy
Most monuments are literally set in stone — or cast in bronze to better survive the weather. Being enduring, they…
Let’s swap murders: Amanda Craig’s The Golden Rule reviewed
It has been three years since Amanda Craig’s previous novel, The Lie of the Land, the story of a foundering…
Imperialism is far from over, but gathering force in disguise
From ancient times, empires have risen and fallen, driven by war, territorial acquisition, trade, plunder, religion, ideology, technology, culture and…
Foreign fields: Boyd Tonkin chooses his favourite shorter classics in translation
If I had a rouble or a euro for every reader who fulfilled their lockdown promise to devour Dostoevsky, Tolstoy…
The attraction of repulsion: The Disaster Tourist, by Yun-Ko Eun, reviewed
Disaster tourism allows people to explore places in the aftermath of natural and man-made disasters. Sites of massacres and concentration…
Lives of luxury for Sparta’s women
History is full of ‘ifs’ and the Spartan story fuller than most. If the 300 had not made their famous…
Finder and keeper: two family memoirs reviewed
What can we ever know about our family’s past? How do we love those closest to us when doing so…
Next year in Jerusalem
Alex Ryvchin’s book couldn’t possibly have come at a better time. On an almost daily basis, voices opposed to the…
How time vanishes: the more we study it, the more protean it seems
Some books elucidate their subject, mapping and sharpening its boundaries. The Clock Mirage, by the mathematician Joseph Mazur, is not…
A scandalous cover-up: the El Bordo mining tragedy of 1920
On the morning of 10 March 1920, on the edge of the city of Pachuca in central Mexico, 87 miners…
How do we greet one another today?
Conversation is a fascinating subject, says Philip Hensher – but very few people get it right
Piracy pays: how history’s greatest buccaneer got off scot-free
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
