Books
They’re all in it together
However often rehearsed, the facts remain eye-popping. Inequality has bolted out of control over the last three decades. Democracy has proved increasingly powerless to check the unaccountable runaway oligarchy that… Read more
The frontiers of freedom
The problem with Nick Cohen’s very readable You Can’t Read This Book is the way that you can, glaringly, read this book. This isn’t quite as glib an observation as… Read more
A time to moan and weep
Ferdinand Mount recalls the crisis years of the early 1970s, when Britain was pronounced ‘ungovernable’ The residents of Flitwick, Bedfordshire, were enjoying a wine-and-cheese party in the village hall when… Read more
Physical and spiritual decay
The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’ susceptibility to physical decay. The most striking thing about Piers Paul Read’s early novels was their characters’… Read more
An ideal banker
At last, thirty years after his death, we have a proper biography of the enigmatic but inspirational banker Siegmund Warburg, extensively researched and beautifully written. Previous efforts fell short. A… Read more
Whither America?
At the beginning of The Ask, Horace sits with Burke and proclaims that America is a ‘run down and demented pimp’. At the beginning of The Ask, Horace sits with… Read more
Odd men out
The first game played by the Allahakbarries Cricket Club at Albury in Surrey in September 1887 did not bode well for the club’s future. The first game played by the… Read more
Golden youth or electric eel?
Patrick Shaw-Stewart was the cleverest and the most ambitious of the gilded gang of young men who swam in the wake of the not-so-young but perennially youthful Raymond Asquith. Julian… Read more
Blood relatives
The last time I saw Benazir Bhutto was at Oxford, over champagne outside the Examination Schools, when she inquired piercingly of a subfusc linguist, ‘Racine? What is Racine?’ Older and… Read more
Genetics, God and antlers
‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law… Read more
Low dishonest dealings
The strange, unsettled decades between the wars form the backdrop of much of D. J. Taylor’s recent work, including his novel, Ask Alice, and his social history, Bright Young Things.… Read more
Anything for a quiet life
Jim, Crace’s latest novel, All That Follows, marks a deliberate change from past form. Jim, Crace’s latest novel, All That Fol lows, marks a deliberate change from past form. Gone… Read more
The spaced-out years
Barry Miles came to London in the Sixties to escape the horsey torpor of the Cotswolds in which he grew up. Known at first only as ‘Miles’, he worked at… Read more
On our shoulders
Our politics is such a shallow game that any senior British politician who has read a book is apt to be considered cerebral, and if he has read two, feted… Read more
An institution to love and cherish
Books about marriage, like the battered old institution itself, come in and out of fashion with writers, readers and politicians, but never quite die away. These two, from the latest… Read more
No example to follow
Ahundred years ago, a character in a novel who was keen on music would, like E.M. Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch or Leo- nard Bast, be as apt to stumble through a… Read more
Celebration of old times
Towards the end of 1979, Antonia Fraser gave an interview to the Washington Post in connection with her book Charles II (renamed ‘Royal Charles’ so as not to confuse a… Read more
Rural flotsam
Notwithstanding’s suite of inter- linked stories draws on Louis de Bernière’s memories of the Surrey village (somewhere near Godalming, you infer) where he lived as a boy. Notwithstanding’s suite of… Read more
Voices of change
Not every writer would begin a history of the 1950s with a vignette in which the young Keith Waterhouse treads on Princess Margaret by mistake. But David Kynaston is an… Read more
Latest blogs
- It looks like we must hope for the best in Syria Douglas Murray
- Exclusive: Tories go public with EU referendum bill Isabel Hardman
- Syria crisis: debate turns to shoulda, woulda, coulda on tactics Isabel Hardman
- Cable and Willetts: the house-trained ministers? James Forsyth
- Ben Fountain interview: Lies are an affront to writers because lying is the corruption of language Stephen McEwen
- G8: leaders agree Lough Erne declaration and Syria communique Isabel Hardman
- The economic case for sacking bad teachers Fraser Nelson
