Memoir
The torment of mentoring spoilt rich kids
For 20 years of my adult life, I moonlighted as a private tutor. After a full day in the office…
Howard Jacobson superbly captures the terrible cost of becoming a writer
Howard Jacobson, who turns 80 this year, published his first novel aged 40. Since then he has produced roughly a…
Christina Patterson overcomes family misfortunes
The journalist and broadcaster Christina Patterson’s memoir begins promisingly. She has a talent for vivid visual description, not least: ‘We…
A Canadian’s experience of the migrant’s ordeal
No one boards an overladen dinghy and sets out across a choppy sea without very good reason. Laden into migrant…
An innocent abroad: a Dutch tour operator in 1980s Russia
‘One morning in late October 1988,’ begins TheLong Song of Tchaikovsky Street, ‘this dapper-looking guy from Leiden asked me if…
Is Julian Assange on a hiding to nothing?
A question looms throughout this book: is it better to die rather than experience the wrath of a publicly shamed…
Scaling the heights: a woman’s experience of mountain climbing
In her memoir Time on Rock, Anna Fleming charts her progress from ‘terrified novice’ to ‘competent leader’ as she scales…
What did the Russians make of Francis Bacon?
The KGB might not have known much about modern art, but they knew what they liked. For instance, at what…
The misery memoir of a devoted polyamorist
The rules of sex can kill. In 1844 an angry mob shot Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, for his…
Favourite books revisited: Rob Doyle’s edgy reading list
‘Male writers now are the opposition party, and that may not be such a bad thing for them.’ So Rob…
Richard Needham takes a businesslike attitude to the Troubles
This memoir from Sir Richard Needham, 6th Earl of Kilmorey, businessman and former Northern Ireland minister, has a frank opening:…
What I really said to Gordon Brown: Field Marshal Lord Guthrie sets the record straight
A headline in the Mail on Sunday, taken up eagerly by the BBC’s Todayprogramme, claimed recently: ‘The SAS is getting…
A scrapbook of sketches: James Ivory’s memoir is slipshod and inconsequential
James Ivory and Ismail Merchant formed the most successful cinematic partnership since Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger. Between the founding…
Anthony Holden is nostalgic for journalism’s good old bad old days
After a career spanning 50 years, 40 books and about a million parties, Anthony Holden has written a memoir. Based…
A macabre meditation on psoriasis
Obsessed with purity and pain, the boundaries of blame and innocence, Skin is a fascinating meditation on psoriasis, the long-lasting…
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…
Andrew Mitchell relives the agony of Plebgate
Andrew Mitchell, as he readily admits, was born into the British Establishment. Almost from birth, his path was marked out:…
It’s the fisherman who’s truly hooked
Trying to catch fish with rod and line is a pursuit that, for many, goes far beyond the pleasant passing…
The revival of the blacksmith’s craft — a new generation goes at it hammer and tongs
At Intelligent Life, the Economistmagazine where I worked for some years, it was easy to feel intellectually challenged. Even the…
From ‘little Cockney’ to playing Queen Mary: the remarkable career of Eileen Atkins
Eileen Atkins belongs to a singular generation of British actresses, among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Sian Phillips and Vanessa…
The life of an ambassador’s wife
‘One day,’ she writes, ‘we had the Minister for Northern Ireland for the night. He arrived wearing a kilt, which…
Only Iain Sinclair could glimpse Hackney in the wilds of Peru
It seemed like a preposterous proposition. For decades, Iain Sinclair has been an assiduous psychogeographer of London, an eldritch cartographer…
A narrow escape in Britain’s most treacherous mountain range
Twenty-five years ago, my cousin Jock, a Scottish priest, rang in shock. Two priest friends, David and Norman, had been…
A glimpse of lost London – before the yuppie invasion
In a 1923 book called Echo de Paris, the writer Laurence Houseman attempted to conjure up in a very slim,…
The cosmopolitan spirit of the Middle East vanished with the Ottomans
One of the most depressing vignettes in Michael Vatikiotis’s agreeably meandering account of his cosmopolitan family’s experiences in the Near…
