Like most novelists, I am a firm adherent to the W.H. Davies principle of finding time to stand and stare. I was once sauntering down Regent Street when a gentleman hared out of a department store, closely followed by two rather healthier specimens. They flung him to the ground, upon which large quantities of merchandise
Ella Al-Shamahi is a Brummie, born to a Yemeni Arab family. From a strict Muslim upbringing she transitioned (evidently con brio, as ‘dick’ appears in her new book) to the secular life. She is now an author, explorer, academic paleoanthropologist, stand-up comedian and television presenter. This is an impressive c.v., deserving many congratulatory handshakes. But
Okinawa is having a moment. Recently a Telegraph travel destination, to many in the west it’s still unfamiliar except as a location of the Pacific theatre. To Elizabeth Miki Brina, the author of Speak, Okinawa, it was also unfamiliar until she was 34 — though her own mother is Okinawan, and she had spent time
‘What job do you want here?’ asked the editor of Vogue, interviewing a young hopeful. From behind her black sunglasses the 24-year-old replied coolly:‘Yours.’ It took time, but she got it. The girl was, of course, Anna Wintour. Now she is the global Vogue supremo and queen of fashion, before whose lightest frown the whole
Sylvie Bermann was the French ambassador in London between 2014 and 2017. Her stint here was a notable success. She is a highly intelligent, articulate woman, excellent company, an astute observer of the British scene and a notable anglophile, who generated much goodwill for herself and her country. She has taken the opportunity of her
I’ve tried hard to think of someone I dislike enough to recommend this novel* to, but have failed. Elfriede Jelinek is Austria’s leading contemporary literary figure, and to open rein GOLD at random is to get the impression that she is the successor to Thomas Bernhard — page after page without a single paragraph indentation,
The gnostic Gospel of Mary has long been the subject of controversy, even as to which of the several Marys who feature in Jesus’s life was its author. It is generally assumed to have been Mary Magdalene, not least because it depicts her regular adversary, St Peter, refusing to credit a woman’s testimony. In Names
In his history of the Pacific War, Eagle Against the Sun, Ronald Spector described the state of the US army on the eve of the second world war: ‘The main enemies were boredom and debt. The answer to such problems was often liquor.’ When the officer corps was not boozing, it was sufficiently obsessed with
