Non-fiction
Fatal impact theory
As schools are for education, so universities are for higher education. In a civilised society, children should leave school literate, numerate and with some knowledge of science, history and culture.… Read more
Man of mysteries
It was always William Wilkie Collins’s good luck — though in later life something of a humiliation — that he was dragged along on Dickens’s coat-tails — not least in… Read more
His dark materials
Like the dyslexic Faustus who sold his soul to Santa, the life of John Dee was a black comedy of errors. His vain and vulgar efforts to harness the occult… Read more
Epic toy story
In January 1992 a container filled with 7,200 yellow ducks and the same number each of blue turtles, red beavers and green frogs, blow-moulded out of plastic for American children… Read more
Man with a mission
He was a Persian aristocrat who struggled to make his country a democracy. Given to mood swings and sulks worthy of Achilles, Mohammed Mossadegh was born in June 1882 just… Read more
Seeing red
With each passing year it becomes clearer that the cure for global warming is worse than the disease. While wind power and biofuels devastate ecosystems and economies, temperatures and sea… Read more
The family plot
Sam Leith explores the effect that certain writers’ relatives have had on their published works This book’s sort-of preface is a lecture on aunts and absent mothers in Jane Austen… Read more
Anglo-Saxon divide
Philip Oltermann has set himself an almost impossibly ambitious task. In 1996, when he was 15 years old, he moved from Hamburg to London, so he has close experience of… Read more
A deafening silence
One morning in 2007, the music critic Nick Coleman woke up to find that he was profoundly deaf in one ear. ‘The silence did not descend silently, however. It made… Read more
More sinned against than sinning
When I saw the title of this book, then read that it only covered the period 1600-1800 I hoped this would be a riot of comedy, something along the lines… Read more
What makes Romney run?
It can be odd to read a biography of a major political figure for whom, every day while one reads it, the story continues. Everything we hear in the news… Read more
Spiritual superhero
When totting up the positives from the British Raj, people often put the railways first, followed by the Indian Civil Service or the Indian Army. The Empire was won by… Read more
How do birds fly south?
Did you know the external ‘shell’ of the ear is the pinna? That a woman’s oestrogen level alters the way she hears the male voice, making it richer, and thus… Read more
The making of the modern metropolis
Why in 1737 did Dr Johnson choose to leave his home in Lichfield in the Midlands and travel to London to make a fresh start as a writer, asks Jerry… Read more
Loves, hates and unfulfilled desires
Montaigne, who more or less invented the discursive essay, had a method which was highly unmethodical: ‘All arguments are alike fertile to me. I take them upon any trifle .… Read more
Robot on the loose
In December 2005, a passenger on an early-morning flight from Dallas to Las Vegas fell asleep. Woken by a steward when the plane touched down, the man wearily disembarked and… Read more
Ecoutez bien!
The French make it look easy: small babies sleep through the night, toddlers calmly eat four-course lunches, well-dressed mothers chat on the edge of the playground rather than running around… Read more
Saviours of the sea
The last time we went out for lobster in Lyme Bay we found a dogfish in the creel. A type of shark that roamed the seas before dinosaurs existed, a… Read more
Time to sit and stare
Hermitic, oneiric withdrawal from responsibilities and threats is the most effective way of alleviating the pangs of middle age, suggests Marcus Berkmann. In his fifties, he is a frank and… Read more
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