Memoir
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.…
Remembering David Storey, giant of postwar English culture
Jasper Rees remembers David Storey, giant of postwar English culture and wry teller of tales, whose newly published memoir is perhaps his most remarkable work
Not just a trolley dolly: the demanding life of an air hostess
Come Fly the World is not the book I thought I was getting. The slightly (surely deliberately) pulpy cover —…
Haunted by the soft, sweet power of the violin
An extraordinary omission from Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects is the lyre, the instrument closest…
Two of a kind: Monica Jones proved Philip Larkin’s equal for racism and misogyny
Monica Jones certainly proved Philip Larkin’s equal for racism and misogyny, says Andrew Motion
Marina Warner becomes her mother’s ‘shabti’
There comes a time after the death of parents when grief subsides, the sense of loss eases, and you, the…
The home life of Shirley Jackson, queen of horror
‘One of the nicest things about being a writer,’ Shirley Jackson once noted in a lecture titled ‘How I Write’,…
Nostalgia for seedy nightclubs reeking of sex and poppers
Gay bar, how I miss you. Barely any lesbian joints have survived the online dating scene, and Grindr has replaced…
Journey to ‘the grimmest place in the world’
Suffering from post-traumatic stress and the effects of government austerity measures, Paul Jones resigned as the head of an inner-city…
One of the lucky ones: Hella Pick escapes Nazi Germany
Hella Pick is one of that vanishing generation of Jewish refugees who arrived in Britain on the eve of the…
Learning to listen: Sarah Sands goes in search of spirituality
It was the 13th-century wall of a ruined Cistercian nunnery at the far end of her garden in Norfolk that…
The sufferings of Okinawa continue today unheard
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as…
My father, the tyrant: Robert Edric describes a brutal upbringing
In a career stretching back to the mid-1980s, Robert Edric has so far managed a grand total of 28 novels,…
Labour of love: producing the perfect loaf
Wheat flour, and the bread made from it, has been a recurring cause of concern for the British for centuries,…
Hellcat on the loose: Samantha Markle rants about Meghan
A while ago, Samantha Markle declared that her forthcoming book would be about ‘the beautiful nuances of our lives’. Was…
Gabriel Matzneff: the paedophile who hid in plain sight
Until this book was published, Gabriel Matzneff was a respectable man. The French author may have written about his affairs…
Who in their right mind would choose to be a forensic psychiatrist?
When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to…
My mother’s secret life was a Dickensian horror story
What happens to a child raised without love? This is the agonising question that the American lawyer Justine Cowan braces…
A bored business administrator in Leicester puts the intelligence services to shame
In the summer of 2012, a man was walking near Jabal Shashabo, a Syrian rebel enclave, when he spotted a…
‘There were no rules then’: Dana Gillespie’s 1960s childhood
Although I can understand why Dana Gillespie might choose to call her memoir after her most famous album, for the…
Barbara Amiel is a cross between Medusa and Maria Callas
If this book becomes a Netflix blockbuster, as it surely must, Barbara Amiel presents us with an opening image. She…
How we laughed: the golden days of Bananarama
Saying you don’t like Bananarama is like saying you don’t like summer or Marilyn Monroe — a sure sign of…
The brutality of the Gulag was totally dehumanising
‘It was a gray mass of people in rags, lying motionless with bloodless, pale faces, cropped hair, with a shifty,…
Who killed Jane Britton in 1969?
The problem with telling stories about Harvard is that Harvard, if it teaches anything these days, teaches distrust of stories.…
A love story — with clothes as heroes
On the weekly ‘opinions’ afternoons, the public would arrive with carefully wrapped parcels holding items to be identified, writes Claire…
