James Walton 
And the Mountain Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini - review
The American comedian Stephen Colbert once joked that when he publicly criticised the novels of Khaled Hosseini, his front garden was invaded by angry members of women’s books groups. They… Read more
Why David Bowie is still underrated
Is it just me, or is there quite a lot being written about David Bowie at the moment? Of course, there’s the fact that the V&A’s blockbuster exhibition has coincided… Read more
Whatever happened to dear Aunt Jane?
In 1818, an unknown critic in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine went out on something of a limb. One day, he claimed, Jane Austen would be among the most popular of English… Read more
Crying and laughing about it all
For many biographers of popular musicians, the obvious problem is that the only interesting bit comes when your subjects are in their brief creative pomp. For Sylvie Simmons, the situation… Read more
Still Waters run deep
T.C. Boyle is not one of those authors who can be accused of writing the same novel again and again. Over the past 30 years, his subject matter has ranged… Read more
Over-cooked
Starting with Lemprière’s Dictionary — an unexpected worldwide hit in the early 1990s — Lawrence Norfolk has never been a man for the slim novella. Complicated of plot and huge… Read more
Bookends: The Saint Zita Society, by Ruth Rendell
Sometimes it seems as if Ruth Rendell’s heart just isn’t in all that killing any more. Certainly, her latest book, The Saint Zita Society (Hutchinson, £12.99), works best as a… Read more
Little Miss Sunshine
James Kelman is famously not a man fond of making concessions — whether to bourgeois interviewers, literary fashions, traditional punctuation or his own readers. Sure enough, his latest novel comes… Read more
Don’t hold your breath
The case for Richard Ford isn’t hard to make. Ever since his breakthrough novel The Sportswriter in 1986, his multi-award-winning fiction has combined an unsparing intelligence with an unashamed high-mindedness… Read more
Heroics and mock-heroics
‘Poets don’t count well,’ says Ian Duhig in his contribution to Jubilee Lines — an assertion unexpectedly confirmed by Carol Ann Duffy’s preface. Admittedly, if the book did contain one… Read more
To thine own self be true
Azazeel comes to Britain as the winner of the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, inevitably known as the ‘Arabic Booker’. It’s also been both a source of controversy and… Read more
Deviation and double entendre
If there’s anything full-time novelists hate more than a celebrity muscling in on their turf, it’s the celebrity doing such a good job that it seems as if anybody could… Read more
Resounding successes
The British Library’s ‘Spoken Word’ series, drawing heavily on the BBC archives, has already shown quite a range — from Tennyson’s famously crackly reading of ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’… Read more
Many parts of man
In some ways, you’ve got to hand it to Craig Raine. Two years ago, after a distinguished career as a poet and all-round man of letters, he published his first… Read more
Simon Hoggart: Chilean Miners
Angus Macqueen is a film-maker whose CV includes The Death of Yugoslavia, Gulag, Cocaine and a slightly odd period commissioning the likes of The Secret Millionaire as Channel 4’s head… Read more
Golden corn
Sebastian Barry’s novels, I’m beginning to think, are a bit like that famous illusion of the two faces and a vase. Most of the time you’re reading them, they seem… Read more
Don’t blur the lines
Did you know that on the Central Line’s maiden journey to Shepherd’s Bush, one of the passengers was Mark Twain? Or that The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Sign… Read more
When more is less
If you know anything at all about Cynthia Ozick — an officially accredited grande dame in America, less famous in Britain — you won’t be surprised to hear that her… Read more
Freudian slip
At Last is the fifth — and, it’s pretty safe to say, most eagerly awaited — of Edward St Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. At Last is the fifth — and,… Read more
There is no alternative
Stand-up comedians: is there anything they can’t do? Not only do they make up a huge proportion of chat-show guests — and of chat-show hosts — they also present Horizon,… Read more
Latest blogs
- UKIP, Pierre Poujade and a political class that’s seen to be “out-of-touch”. Alex Massie
- Labour tries to defuse civil partnerships row – by backing government amendment Isabel Hardman
- Will civil partnerships kill the gay marriage bill? Isabel Hardman
- Edmund Burke – a writer one should always read Douglas Murray
- Tan Twan Eng interview: ‘I have no alternative but to write in English’ Stephen McEwen
- Eurovision was as hilarious as ever Rod Liddle
- Britain can now afford to send a man into space. Pity we can’t afford a proper navy Fraser Nelson
