The Great War was enough to make grown men weep
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo it took a mere six weeks for the diplomats of Europe’s…
Does a stick insect count as a pet?
What is it that distinguishes humans from other animals? The default answer nowadays is tediously misanthropic, but a more interesting…
Jan Morris talks to herself — about music, irony and cats
To Jan Morris, I am anathema. That goes, too, for David Attenborough. It is a word that this unarguably great…
The rich literature of the game of poker
According to the subtitle, this is a collection of ‘short stories of long nights at the poker table’. Were that…
Raining bombs on cats and dogs
War Horse, by way of book and play and film, has brought the role of horses in war into the…
Middle-class marriage — and an apologia for adultery
What to make of this unexpectedly startling novel? Though you may be lured into a false sense of familiarity by…
A son’s search for the mother he never met
To tell this story of his search for a mother lost to mystery in early infancy, its author uses the…
Louise Doughty’s Black Water will delight fans of Graham Greene and John le Carré
In Indonesia in 1965–6 half a million communists and supposed communist sympathisers were murdered by a range of civilian and…
Anthony Quinn’s Freya: an engaging costume drama
The name Freya is derived from the old Norse word for ‘spouse’, perhaps Odin’s. As a goddess she is variously…
To the ends of the earth — but not back
What’s in a name? The identity of the author offers a clue to one of the themes of this intriguing…
A moving tribute to Janusz Korczak, hero of the Warsaw ghetto
‘My mother and father named me Aron, but my father said they should have named me What Have You Done,…
All change: everything metamorphoses in Aquarium, including its author, who takes on the persona of a 12-year-old girl
Books ought to be able to stand on their own, but perhaps it is important to know this about David…
A ghost story without the scary bits
Two men walk into an ice cream parlour in Austin, Texas, order the three teenage girls working there to undress,…
A big literary beast's descent into incoherence
Something odd happened between the advance publicity for this book and its printed appearance. Trailed as addressing the troubled history…
Things to do: read this book
It would be perverse not to succumb to the temptation to write this review as a list. So, the first…
Kafka goes to Dubai
‘X’ is in ‘the Situation’: Joseph O’Neill, author of the clever and superb Netherland, hereby lets us know that his…
Sorbet with Rimbaud
The Bloomsbury of the title refers to the place, not the group. The group didn’t have a poet. ‘I would…
The Zone of Interest is grubby, creepy – and Martin Amis's best for 25 years
‘Everybody could see that this man was not a “monster”, but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he…
Nature inspired P.J. Kavanagh – but so did ghosts, dreams, grief and God
P.J. Kavanagh, if not dismissed or relegated, is often shall we say bracketed, as a ‘nature poet’. The truth is,…
Half-poetry, half-prose, half-Belgian – and not half bad
Patrick McGuinness’s prose trembles on the edge of poetry, occasionally indeed tipping gently over into it. This is thoroughly characteristic…
A master craftsman of the anecdote
One of the many charms of this book is its sheer unexpectedness, which makes it hard to review, for to…
Deserter, wifebeater, great poet: the shame and glory of Vernon Scannell
Vernon Scannell was a thief, a liar, a deserter, a bigamist, a fraud, an alcoholic, a woman-beater and a coward.…
A Strong Song Tows Us, by Richard Burton - review
How minor is minor? ‘Rings a bell’ was more or less the response of two English literature graduates, now successful…
Six Bad Poets, by Christopher Reid - review
Is poetry in good enough health to be made fun of in this way? The irony is that this long,…
There and Then: Personal Terms 6, by Frederic Raphael - review
Frederic Raphael is forensic in his description of the failures of successful people. He is enviously superior and he is…
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