Memoir
The pleasures – and perils – of getting on your bike
Jody Rosen lives and cycles in Brooklyn, which makes him what the Mexican essayist Julio Torri calls ‘a suicide apprentice’.…
The lost world of the Karoo
Julia Blackburn’s Dreaming the Karoo is the diary of a very bad year: from March 2020, when a research trip…
Is self-loathing the British disease?
Whatever one thinks of the government’s plans to send refugees to Rwanda, it was amusing to see this country’s left…
Where does a mother’s history end and a daughter’s begin?
Where does a mother’s history end and a daughter’s begin?
Naples will never escape the shadow of Vesuvius
Naples, the tatterdemalion capital of the Italian south, is said to be awash with heroin. Chinese-run morphine refineries on its…
The great breakfast dilemma: should baked beans be part of a full English?
A popular pastime in Britain is to post one’s breakfast on social media for strangers to pass judgment on bacon…
All about my mother: Édouard Louis’s latest family saga
Shunned by his father and his peers because of his homosexuality, Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule in 1992) left his village…
Michael Beloff QC drops names – but they’re not the ones we’re curious about
‘The law,’ according to W.S. Gilbert’s Lord Chancellor, ‘is the true embodiment of everything that’s excellent’ and, by common consent,…
We could all once tell bird’s-foot trefoil from rosebay willowherb
‘There are a great many ways of holding on to our sanity amid the vices and follies of the world,’…
Ethel, Ella and all that jazz: the soundtrack of a Chicago childhood
Margo Jefferson’s Constructing a Nervous System compresses memoir and cultural criticism into one slim, explosive volume, and in doing so…
Piloting a Boeing Dreamliner can be less than dreamy
Mark Vanhoenacker dreams of my nightmares. Ever since he was a young boy, he fantasised about piloting airplanes. Ever since…
Jarvis Cocker measures out his life in attic junk
If you were hoping for an autobiography this isn’t it. Jarvis Cocker calls it ‘an inventory’ and insists: ‘This is…
From teenage delinquent to man of letters: James Campbell’s remarkable career
The great age of the Scottish autodidact must have ended a century ago, but it had a prodigious impact while…
What do Beethoven, D.H. Lawrence and George Best have in common?
This is not a book about tennis. Roger Federer appears early on, trailed by the obligatory question ‘When will he…
Musings on harmony, melody and rhythm
Every Good Boy Does Fine – a banal phrase that also just happens to be the key to limitless wonder.…
Reflections on water in the Middle East
These Bodies of Water begins dramatically (as befits a book derived from Sabrina Mahfouz’s Royal Court show A History of…
The history of Nazism in small objects
‘I can’t cook,’ writes the historian Karina Urbach, ‘which is probably why it took me so long to realise that…
Poor parenting is at the root of our failing schools
When it comes to education, I’m in two minds, maybe three. I was sent to private schools, including, for my…
Jonathan Bate weaves a memoir around madness in English literature
There is a trend for books in which academics write personally about their engagement with literature. Examples include Lara Feigel’s…
The spycop debacle is another nail in the Met’s coffin
In 2010, Mark Kennedy, a tattooed social justice warrior, was exposed as an undercover police officer. In this guise he…
Norman Scott has the last word on a very English scandal
Norman Scott’s long-anticipated memoir reveals the British Establishment at its worst, says Roger Lewis
How I narrowly escaped joining Argentina’s ‘disappeared’
A bully-boy leader. A corrupt, out-of-touch regime. A twisted reading of history. An unprovoked, military-led landgrab. A domestic disinformation blitz.…
The ghostly ruins of vanished Britain
Take a walk in the English countryside and you get the impression that little has changed. The churches and farmhouses,…
Abandoned for a bogus guru – Lily Dunn’s harrowing family memoir
Sins of My Father begins with an ending. Describing her 61-year-old parent’s final desperate flight from a life of vibrant…
Sister, where are you? – Clover Stroud mourns her beloved sibling
‘CERTIFICATE IS NOT EVIDENCE OF IDENTITY,’ the freshly issued death certificate read. In the craziness and shock of grief for…
