These two memoirs by ladies born into the Russian elite in the 1880s have both had to wait many decades before publication in English. The Green Snake, however, has gone through eight editions in its original German, whereas The Russian Countess has never been published before. No one was in the least interested in a
Tim Waterstone is the man who set up the bookshop chain in 1982, so you might expect him to have read a few books, and be OK at writing them. In fact, he’s more a businessman than a writer. He began life as a broker in Calcutta, before becoming marketing manager for Allied Breweries and
Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the fourth in her series about Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier, ex-police officer and ex-husband who now works in a desultory way as a private investigator. Kate Atkinson’s latest novel is the fourth in her series about Jackson Brodie, the ex-soldier, ex-police officer and ex-husband who now works in a desultory
Michael Moorcock’s career is indisputably heroic. Michael Moorcock’s career is indisputably heroic. At a rate of up to 15,000 words a day, rudimentarily equipped with exercise books, bottles of Quink and a leaky Osmiroid, he has written, among other things, novels by the score, some of which — The Cornelius Quartet, The Colonel Pyat sequence
Just as the slaughter in the trenches of Flanders and northern France gave birth to the tragic verses of Wilfred Owen, so the experience of bombing and being bombed between 1940 and 1945 generated its own major poetry in Britain and the USA. The scale of the catastrophe was vast: 55,000 of British Bomber Command
I’ve only ever read one other book about sleep — the brilliant Counting Sheep, by Paul Martin, which collates and describes everything we know about sleep in a way that is succinct and peerless. I’ve only ever read one other book about sleep — the brilliant Counting Sheep, by Paul Martin, which collates and describes
This year America celebrates the cent-enary of Mark Twain’s death. This year America celebrates the cent-enary of Mark Twain’s death. He is the nearest that country gets to a national treasure, with a hefty bibliography to show it: the University of California Press’s 70-volume Works and Papers represents but a fragment, and in June Penguin
