Books
Radiance in suburbia
Shena Mackay has had a difficult and unconventional career, and it has taken a long time for most readers to…
The Russian language front
During the war against Hitler, secret services recruited on the old boy net: there was no other way of being…
One man’s prime numbers
When you are a bestselling novelist you get to do things your way. So this isn’t 32 Songs, which would…
Bum ego trip
‘Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity,’…
The Stuart we fail to remember
In 1066 and All That there is a spoof exam question: ‘How can you be so numb and vague about…
A palely loitering revenant
‘Reviewers,’ laments the Dr Cake of Andrew Motion’s title, ‘they are devils. Devils. I have seen good men, good authors,…
The boy who saw too much and too little
Already a bestseller in the many countries where it has been published, I’m Not Scared was described to me as…
Not eating or cheating
‘She was like a bride, they said, festooned in ribbons and bows, a large crucifix resting on her bosom,’ records…
A soft tread and a sure touch
Short stories are best read one a night just before you go to sleep, and this collection by Angela Huth,…
Articles of faith
Richard Dawkins loves fighting. More precisely, he loves winning. To be Dawkinsed, as this selection from his essays of the…
She fashioned her future
Judging by her own ideals of beauty and drama, Diana Dalziel’s arrival in the world must have been a bit…
Why is a birch-tree like a melon?
This is the time of year for armchair gardening. The cold, dark days give one the chance to ignore the…
Homage to A. B. Roger
Woodruff, you have not come to Oxford to take examinations, you have come to learn. The whole purpose of Oxford…
When Irish eyes were smiling
THE SHADOWS OF ELISA LYNCHby Si
Looking – and looking away
Sebald is perturbed by the almost complete failure of German writers to describe the devastation of their country by British…
A palpable hit
If you happen to be one of those maddeningly quick-witted or sideways-thinking readers who can spot at a glance that…
Only slightly under the influence
‘The Age of Russia,’ according to the doom-fraught speculations Oswald Spengler published in 1918, would succeed ‘the Decline of the…
A question of upbringing
Superficially, Hitler and Churchill resembled each other, in the way that two very powerful leaders will. In particular, as Andrew…
A picture that tells a story
Can it be said that anyone is sane, that anyone is healthy – or does all life consist of degrees…
Stopping short of omniscience
Although Janet Malcolm has written in depth about an extraordinary range of subjects, from psychoanalysis and photography through to literary…
The hunter hunted
Abbie Devereaux, the heroine of Land of the Living, finds herself hooded and bound and a prisoner of a man…
I was a camera
Julia Margaret Cameron is hip. This would not have astonished her – she had every confidence in her vision as…
Liquid and solid satisfaction
Cocoa beans were ‘found’ by Europeans on Columbus’s fourth, final and failed voyage (1502). The beans were sufficiently rare to…
Our longest peace
Has anybody ever struggled for Europe? They might have struggled for British Ulster or Free France or the village green…
Every fair from fair sometime declines
Polly Toynbee describes herself as ‘profoundly anti-religious’, but she had the energy and curiosity to accept an ingenious challenge from…
