Bullying
Truly inspirational: the hospital diary of Hanif Kureishi
‘My world has been smashed...and there is nothing I can do about’, writes Kureishi of the freak accident in 2022 that has left him paralysed. ‘But I will not go under. I will make something of it’
Familiar scenarios: Our Evenings, by Alan Hollinghurst, reviewed
There’s a certain pattern to an Alan Hollinghurst novel. A young gay man goes to Oxford. He’s middle class and…
The misery of growing up in a utopian community
Susanna Crossman recalls her childhood of bullying and sexual molestation in an Orwellian dystopia supposedly devoted to freedom and equality
David Baddiel’s father and mother must be the most talked about parents in Britain
Colin the Dinky Toys dealer, familiar from Baddiel’s TV documentaries, emerges from this memoir as a relentless bully, but at least the ‘fantasist’ Sarah provides suitably funny anecdotes
Women beware women: Wife, by Charlotte Mendelson, reviewed
The claustrophobic bullying in this story of a lesbian marriage that sours is so well done it’s nauseating
Echoes of Tom Brown’s School Days: Rabbits, by Hugo Rifkind, reviewed
When 16-year-old Tommo moves to an elite, brutish boarding school, he longs to fit in and even manages to join the inner circle. But can he ever really become ‘one of them’?
My prep school scarred me for life
‘A part of me died at school’, Charles Spencer writes in his shockingly stark account of sadism and sexual abuse at Maidwell Hall, Northamptonshire, in the 1970s
The danger of making too many friends
Elizabeth Day recognises that real friends need nurturing, and spreading yourself too thinly doesn’t help anyone
Portrait of a domestic tyrant: The Exhibitionist, by Charlotte Mendelson, reviewed
If vivid, drily hilarious tales about messy families stuffed with passive aggression and seething resentment are your thing, you will…
Bernardine Evaristo sets a rousing example of ‘never giving up’
Bernardine Evaristo’s Manifesto — part instructional guide for artists, part call to arms for equality, part literary memoir —shimmers with…
Death by negligence: why did no one diagnose my sister’s TB?
In 2016, Arifa Akbar’s elder sister, Fauzia, died suddenly in the Royal Free Hospital, London at the age of 45.…
Problem parents: My Phantoms, by Gwendoline Riley, reviewed
Gwendoline Riley’s unsentimental fiction hovers on the edge of comedy and bleakness, and has drawn comparisons from Jean Rhys to…
Dear Mary: how can I make my timid husband ask for a longer haircut?
Q. We sent out email invitations to our drinks party and have had too many acceptances. The venue has said…
The fall of Daniel Barenboim
A few years ago, I hooked up with a BBC team in Berlin to record a programme with Daniel Barenboim.…
Generation Snowflake: how we train our kids to be censorious cry-babies
We’re training our children to be thin-skinned, censorious and belligerently entitled
The Sunlight Pilgrims: a chilling tale of the new Ice Age
Every second novel is fated to be measured against its predecessor; and that comparison is particularly hard when the debut…
Charles Moore’s Notes: Trying to reach a global agreement on anything is a waste of time
Speaking on the Today programme on Monday, Sir David Attenborough, who wants a global agreement to control carbon emissions, pointed…
The young are miserable and the old are happy – shouldn’t it be the other way around?
We learn from a new report that children in England are among the unhappiest in the world — more unhappy,…
The comedy club theory of dictatorship
The comedy club theory of dictatorship
Melissa Kite was the most unpopular girl in her school
If you are bullied at school, you see, you never stop feeling bullied, no matter how old you are. It…
