Memoir
Surviving an abusive mother-daughter relationship
In a dialogue with her younger self, the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis tries to make sense of her traumatic upbringing at the hands of a repressive, coercive mother
The shame of being an alcoholic mother
Julia Hamilton and her daughter Arabella Byrne share their experiences of an addiction that seemed ‘baked into them like a curse’, and the special stigma they felt attached to them
From public bar to cocktail bar: books for the discerning drinker
There’s something for all tastes this year, whether poetic meditations on the pub, advice on wines for extended cellaring or recipes for new-wave martinis
And still the colonial memoirs keep coming…
Peter Godwin’s third volume to date – of a family in various stages of decline after leaving their African homeland – is redeemed by its vivid evocations and erudition
How ballet lessons transformed Princess Diana
The choreographer Anne Allan not only indulged the princess’s love of dance in weekly one-to-one sessions but also became her longstanding confidante
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
Man of mystery and friend of the Cambridge spies
Details of Baron Talbot of Malahide’s attempts to clean up the mess left by his one-time mentor Guy Burgess are still conveniently exempted from the Freedom of Information Act
The hare-raising experience that changed my life
When Chloe Dalton adopts an abandoned new-born leveret, she soon finds her domestic routine radically altered
Iris Apfel’s talent to amaze
Instantly recognisable with her cascades of necklaces and startling colours (‘pastels make me nervous’), the interior decorator would achieve real fame with a Met exhibition in 2005
Is it wrong to try to ‘cure’ autism?
Do autistic individuals not feel empathy? What is the right treatment for an autistic child? These are just some of the questions discussed in Virginia Bovell’s passionate, informative memoir
Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems
Frank and Gail Zappa’s eldest child describes how the endless battles between her manipulative mother and misogynist father in the 1970s blight the family to this day
Imperfections in wood can make for the loveliest carvings
Often beneath the surface of a knobbly lump bulging from the side of a tree ‘a myriad of swirling, almost impossibly beautiful clusters is hiding’, bursting with creative possibility
Sarah Rainsford joins the long list of foreign correspondents banned from Russia
After decades of writing about Russian affairs, Rainsford now finds herself persona non grata – but admits she no longer feels nostalgia for the country
The rootlessness that haunts the children of immigrants
Edward Wong tries to connect with his Chinese heritage by retracing his father’s military postings before the Great Famine – but finds the country too changed to make comparisons
A David and Goliath battle involving a billion-dollar pornography website
Laila Mickelwait appears to wage a one-woman crusade to shut down a major distributor of rape and child abuse videos
At last, a private education that wasn’t unmitigated misery
Robyn Hitchcock describes how his musical tastes were formed listening, aged 14, to Dylan, the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix on the school gramophone at Winchester
Richard Flanagan rails against wrongs ‘too vast to have a name’
‘Why do we do what we do to each other?’ he asks, citing among many atrocities the dropping of the atom bomb and the genocide of aboriginal Tasmanians
Imprisoned for years on Putin’s whim
Vladimir Pereverzin’s ‘crime’ was to have worked for a company owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky – and refusing to give false evidence resulted in an 11-year sentence in the camps
The Karakachan sheepdog is a match for any bear – but not for modern society
The fearless breed, descended from the Molossus of Epirus described by Aristotle, may soon disappear from Central Europe, along with the flocks it guards
Islands of inspiration: a poet’s life on Shetland
Jen Hadfield is not only spellbound by the moods of the ocean and the hectic weather but by the Shaetlan dialect itself – which ‘struck me immediately as a poetic language’
Pure Puccini: an opera lover’s melodramatic family history
Flamboyant theatrics were part of Michael Volpe’s life as CEO of Opera Holland Park. But those of his feuding Italian relatives rival anything seen on stage
Afrikaner angst: Cato Pedder goes in search of her ancestors
As a descendant of Jan Smuts, Pedder is Afrikaner aristocracy. But she finds the legacy increasingly problematic while researching the lives of her female forebears
Shalom Auslander vents his disgust – on his ‘grotesque, vile, foul, ignominious self’
Long derided as ‘feh’ by his Orthodox parents, the American writer admits to being his own hanging judge
If only Britain knew how it was viewed abroad
22 June 2024 9:00 am
If the country were a person, it would need its friends to sit it down and deliver it a few home truths about its damaging behaviour to itself and others, says Michael Peel