Memoir
Learning the art lingo: the people, periods and -isms
An aspiring artist turned journalist, Bianca Bosker wheedles her way into the New York art scene – of gallerists, collectors, glamour and gossip
The joy of hanging out with artists
Lynn Barber finds painters and sculptors easily the most congenial people to interview - despite having received a death threat from the Chapman brothers
The endless fascination of volcanoes
Tamsin Mather is the latest highly articulate volcanologist to combine vivid personal experience with thoughtful scientific explanation
The traditional British hedge is fast vanishing
The best hedges teem with the biodiversity that plays such a vital part in our future. Yet, since the 1950s, farmers and developers have been destroying them at an alarming rate
What do we mean when we talk of ‘home’?
Though deeply attached to her ‘squat, odd-looking house’ near Uffington, Clover Stroud comes to realise that home is as much about bonds between people as a particular place
A GP diagnosed me with ‘acute anxiety’ – only to exacerbate it
When Tom Lee suffers a breakdown after the birth of his first child, a doctor warns him against the only drug that proves effective, further adding to his distress
Living in the golden age of navel-gazing
Every other book now seems to be a collection of sad, wry, funny reflections by some sad, wry, funny columnist – and Joel Golby’s Four Stars is among the best
To Salman Rushdie, a dream before his attempted murder ‘felt like a premonition’
Though premonitions are not things he believes in, Rushdie notes the many spooky coincidences surrounding the attack – which he describes in gripping, terrifying detail
Murder in the dark: The Eighth House, by Linda Segtnan, reviewed
Motherhood prompts Segtnan to research the cold case of Birgitta Sivander, a nine-year-old found murdered in a Swedish forest in 1948
A magnificent set of dentures still leaves little to smile about
After undergoing prolonged cosmetic dentistry, 50-year-old John Patrick Higgins reluctantly acknowledges that he’ll never be the stylish man about town of his dreams
‘Now I have been made whole’: Lucy Sante’s experience of transition
Until the age of 66, Sante lived as a deeply divided man. In this story of self-realisation, she describes how transitioning finally ‘lifted the veil’ over her existence
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
Stories of the Sussex Downs
Focusing on a 20-mile square of West Sussex, Alexandra Harris explores its rich history, from the wreck of a Viking longboat to a refuge for French Resistance agents
On the road with Danny Lyon
The celebrated photojournalist describes his peripatetic youth recording revolution in Haiti, hunger and homelessness in Mexico and the civil rights movement in the US
The true valour needed to go on pilgrimage in Britain
Oliver Smith finds sanctity in remote peninsulas and holy islands, but is less impressed by the tacky ephemera that decorate our more accessible shrines
The healing power of Grasmere
Following in Wordsworth’s footsteps, Esther Rutter finds new self-confidence and happiness in the entrancing surroundings of Dove Cottage
A war reporter bravely faces death – but not from sniper fire
As a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, Rod Nordland learned to expect many dangers, but a brain tumour wasn’t one of them
A mother-daughter love story
In her latest memoir, Leslie Jamison describes her pregnancy, experience of childbirth and devotion to her baby, returning repeatedly to the dilemmas of a working mother
The summer I dwelt in marble halls
Gill Johnson recalls the glorious months she once spent in the ‘gilded labyrinth’ of a Venetian palazzo, employed as an English tutor to an aristocratic Italian family
The mystery of Werner Herzog
The film director treats us to a dervish dance of anecdotes but still keeps his real life secret, says Peter Bradshaw
Robyn Davidson explores yet another foreign country – the past
Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11
Too many tales of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle
Contemplating ‘hedgehog philosophy’ with Sarah Sands, Rowan Williams, Greta Thunberg and other luminaries would test anyone’s patience after 150 pages
Another tragic case involving medical incompetence and cover-up
John Niven had to fight hard to discover why his suicidal brother was left alone and unmonitored in an Ayrshire hospital, with fatal consequences
Who would be a farmer’s wife?
‘Some days I feel like I’m drowning,’ admits Helen Rebanks, caught between cooking, housework, admin, tagging lambs and the school run at the Lake District family farm
Must Paris reinvent itself?
Muriel Zagha 27 April 2024 9:00 am
The beautifully preserved, elitist metropolis now looks increasingly out of step with neighbouring capitals and may be forced to become more multicultural