Imagine you’re an unknown young writer whose first collection of stories wins the Pulitzer prize. Your first novel is filmed, your second is shortlisted for the Man Booker and your next collection of stories goes straight to No.1 in the New York Times bestseller list, while prizes and honours are showered on you. Might the
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities of Germany after 1945 (though no politicians were directly involved). The chief needs of the shattered population at the time were, of course, practical: food, water, sanitation and the reconstruction of buildings. But a vital
The opening of Graham Swift’s new novel clearly signals his intent. ‘Once upon a time’ tells us that this will be a book about adversity and triumph. We know, because this is how fairy tales work, that there is the possibility of a happily ever after. And there is the hint too, in these opening
Being a Beast is an impassioned and proselytising work of philosophy based on a spectacular approach to nature writing. That genre has given us riches on the language of landscape, the redemptive power of goshawks and the lives of fields, rooks, butterflies et al. We are wealthier for the movement, but in none of many
When Henry Worsley died last month attempting the first solo, unaided expedition across the Antarctic, he was 30 miles short of the finish line. He fits right in with a long British tradition of heroic failures: General Gordon killed at Khartoum; the defeat of the British by the Zulus at Isandlwana. And the most precise
‘Ah, Jeremy,’ remarked Tony Blair at a smart dinner party in Islington not long before he became prime minister, ‘he hasn’t made the journey.’ As it turned out, this was something of an understatement. And yet here we are, 20 years on, and the Right Honourable Jeremy Corbyn is leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. It
Aversion to pretentiousness was probably an English trait before Dr Johnson famously refuted Bishop Berkeley’s arguments for the immateriality of the world by booting a stone. There are plausible historical reasons for this. Suspicious of the Catholicism of neighbouring Ireland and France (where words were thought to contain spiritual power even if they were not
The dystopian novel in which a Ballardian deluge or viral illness transforms planet Earth has become something of a sub-genre, and Clare Morrall’s astute and vigorously imagined novel follows on from the best of them, such as Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy and (most recently)Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Antonia Honeywell’s The Ship. Intriguingly,
Most people know more about the 12th century than they think they do. This is, as Richard Huscroft reminds us in his lively new history, because it is a story often told. Stephen and Matilda. Thomas Becket’s murder. Richard the Lionheart. Bad King John and Magna Carta. These are the familiar friends of Sellar and
In recent weeks, North Korea allegedly developed a hydrogen bomb and hangover-free booze. This would be a worrying combination in any government not widely thought to have the force projection of an aggressively drunk toddler with a bag on its head. North Korea is often portrayed as a cartoon state — something sustained by Kim
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While a book of hours endlessly recycles, the point of the book of the year is change, the more the better. There is an implied contest between years — you say 1917 is the most important;
For a child, the idea of ‘knowing’ your mother doesn’t compute; she’s merely there. As an adult, there may be the curiosity — who is this person who gave me birth and brought me up? — but also some kind of resignation: you’ll simply never know. Better, even, not to know. So long as she’s
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air, a lifelong passion. When he was 14, the family emigrated to Europe. There, as a young man, Finch excelled both as an alpinist and a student, enrolling at the prestigious Zurich Federal Institute of Technology,
In the conclusion to his very substantial study of England’s least known and most misunderstood Baroque architect, Owen Hopkins discusses some of the modern folklore that has developed around Nicholas Hawksmoor over the past 40 years, showing how swiftly a myth can capture the public imagination. The bulk of this unevenly written, fact-packed book is
The title of Tim Parks’s 17th novel is false advertising, because Thomas and Mary: A Love Story is barely a love story, and it’s certainly not about Mary. The intended effect is irony: the dust jacket promises ‘a love story in reverse’, and the opening chapter describes Thomas Paige losing his wedding ring on Blackpool
The much-lamented journalist and bon viveur Sam White, late of the rue du Bac, The Spectator and the Evening Standard, who lived in Paris for over 40 years, once wrote an affectionate portrait of his adopted home that opened with the defiant words, ‘Yes: I like it here.’ As a short review of the city
This isn’t a book to read before lights out. It’s about a mentally ill man whose mother exiles him from rural Ireland after years of rumours and reprisals related to his habit of startling passers-by with his bared erection. She has tried strapping him to a chair and bolting the door, but all that did
I don’t know if this counts as name-dropping, but I recently interviewed a boyhood friend of Elvis Presley’s in Tupelo, Mississippi. The interview required a bit of patience, because his memories of the young Elvis appeared only intermittently amid a lengthy ramble through more or less anything that crossed his mind. But, as it turned
The fewer birds there are, the more books about them, particularly of the literary kind. Helen MacDonald’s H is for Hawk swept all the prizes; and James Macdonald Lockhart has already won a £10,000 Royal Society of Literature Award for Non-Fiction to fund research for his debut. It is of the quest variety, recently popularised
When the Saqqara pyramids were opened in 1880, the chamber walls were found to be covered in hieroglyphic writings, and these texts have been a subject of discussion among Egyptologists ever since. What do they mean? What do they represent? What do they tell us about the religion or the cosmology or the worldview of
