The Spectator

Books of the year I: a choice of reading in 2023

Recommendations from Andrew Motion, Jonathan Sumption, A.N. Wilson, Andrea Wulf, Peter Frankopan, Clare Mulley and many others. To be continued next week

[Lotte Heath] 
issue 04 November 2023
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Andrew Motion

Something old made new: The Iliad in Emily Wilson’s muscular and moving new translation, the first by a woman, is truly what it claims to be – a version for our time (Norton, £30). And something new made immediate: Hannah Sullivan’s second collection of poems, Was It For This (Faber, £12.99),

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Arabella Byrne

The private school exodus has begun

‘Why did Albert [not his real name] leave before sports day?’ As is increasingly the norm, I am driving my seven-year-old daughter home from school, and she has questions for me. As questions go, they are reasonable. ‘Albert left to go to a new school’ I say. ‘But he told me it was because of the bat’

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