Allan Massie 
About to cop it?
Rebus is back, in a novel long, meaty and persuasive enough to make up for the years of absence. Actually, he is only part-way back — on a civilian attachment… Read more
Life and letters
With few exceptions, literary journalists moulder in the grave and are soon forgotten. They may get some sort of posthumous life if they are made the subject of other books.… Read more
Give me excess of it
There is a joke about a retired colonel whose aberrant behaviour had him referred to a psychoanalyst. He emerged from the session fuming. ‘Damn fool says I’m in love with… Read more
Life & Letters: A PM’s summer reading
One of the weaknesses of many political biographies is that they are so often all about politics. The authors either forget that politicians are people, and sometimes interesting people, or… Read more
Storm in a wastepaper basket
‘It’s the revenge of Dreyfus,’ came the cry from the dock. The speaker was the veteran right-wing ideologue, Charles Maurras, found guilty of treason in 1945 for his support of… Read more
Life & Letters: The Creative Writing controversy
It came as a bit of a shock to learn from Philip Hensher’s review of Body of Work: 40 Years of Creative Writing at UEA (31 December) that there are… Read more
Life & Letters: Shakespeare’s women
Gordon Bottomley, Georgian poet with an unpoetic name, wrote a play called King Lear’s Wife with which he hoped to inspire a poetic revival in the theatre. It might be… Read more
The fascist vote
At the age of 72, I begin to wonder, for the first time in my life, if there might be a future for a fascist party in Britain. The thought… Read more
The country of criticism
Karl Miller wrote a book called Doubles, exploring the duality of human nature, Jekyll and Hyde, and such like. Duality fascinates him. Another book was Cockburn’s Millennium, a study of… Read more
Life & Letters
There was a photograph the other day of a Hemingway lookalike competition in Key West, Florida. Bizarre? Perhaps not. It’s 50 years since he put the barrel of a shotgun… Read more
Coolness under fire
The early 19th century was the age of the dandy, and the essence of dandyism was cool self-control. The dandy shunned displays of feeling. There is feeling a-plenty in both… Read more
Life & Letters
When cares attack, and life seems black, How sweet it is to pot a yak, Or puncture hares or grizzly bears, And others I could mention; But in my animal… Read more
Life & Letters: If you can’t make a table…
Why do you write? The question is sometimes posed by interviewers or by members of the audience at book festivals. My answer is usually rather feeble. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I… Read more
Life & Letters: Memoirs as literature
Laurence Sterne remarked rather a long time ago that they order these matters better in France, and happily this is still the case. Fifteen hundred teachers of literature recently protested… Read more
Less is more
‘A good rule for writers: do not explain over-much’ ‘A good rule for writers: do not explain over-much’ (Somerset Maugham: A Writer’s Notebook). Like most of what he had to… Read more
The laird and his legend
‘Stuart Kelly’ the author’s note declares, ‘was born and brought up in the Scottish Borders.’ Not so, as he tells us; he was born in Falkirk, which is in central… Read more
The hell of working
Joseph Conrad was 38, more than halfway through his life, when his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, was published in 1895. He died in 1924 with more than 30 books to… Read more
In the house of Hanover
Either Lucy Worsley or, more probably, her publisher has given her book the subtitle ‘The Secret History of Kensington Palace.’ This is enticing, or intended to be so; it is… Read more
The Lives of Others
‘My wife doesn’t understand me,’ the man said to his Jewish psychoanalyst. ‘I should be so lucky!’ was the reply. It’s a common complaint, not being understood. Yet surely only… Read more
Latest blogs
- Lee Rigby named as victim of Woolwich attack Sebastian Payne
- The friendless Help-to-Buy scheme Isabel Hardman
- Nothing to do with Islam? Douglas Murray
- Why it’s not the 1990s all over again for the Tories James Forsyth
- You’re going to lose. It is only you against many. Alex Massie
- PM avoids knee-jerk response to Woolwich attack Isabel Hardman
- David Cameron’s statement on the Woolwich attack The Spectator
