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In Other Eyes

Someone to trust with parcels, because he’s ‘always in’; the character who locks the gate at night and lingers to make that one-too-many joke; who isn’t sure sometimes what has issued from the opening of his mouth; whose wet shoe lets out a squeal as he fills the kettle with a rising note; one of

Long nights of delicious horror

The thick of autumn is upon us, dear reader, and with it the shivers. Around Hallowe’en you may be tempted to go and see yet another edition of Paranormal Activity (a quotation from the trailer: ‘There’s, like, obviously something going on here’) or something similar. Do not. There is nothing frightening about going to the

Behind the scenes at the Brighton bombing

Sadly, I can’t see it catching on, but one of the notable things about Jonathan Lee’s new novel is that it features a fleeting appearance by John Redwood. The late Geoffrey Howe is there too, distractedly eating fishcakes as he holds forth on the difference between humans and animals. Redwood, Howe and the rest of

When English Catholics were considered as dangerous as jihadis

Martyrdom, these days, does not get a good press. Fifty years ago English Catholics could take a ghoulish pride in the suffering of their 16th-century Tyburn heroes, but in a western world that has learned to be wary of extremist talk of ‘holy war’ or the intoxicating visions of the martyr’s crown that fuelled the

John Lennon’s desert island luxury

Beatlebone is an account of a journey, a psychedelic odyssey, its protagonist — at times its narrator — John Lennon, seen through the prism of Kevin Barry’s imagining. Barry’s first novel, The City of Bohane, was a dystopian nightmare of comic vernacular and violence, showered with praise and prizes. Think James Joyce and Flann O’Brien

What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?

What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The answer is that while all happy families are alike, the children of monsters are unhappy in their own way. Some dictatorial offspring are fairly normal while others are psychos. Nicu Ceausescu, son of the rulers

David Mitchell is in a genre of his own

David Mitchell’s new book, Slade House, is not quite a novel and not really a collection of short stories. It is, rather, a puzzle and an amusement. A member of the same family as last year’s The Bone Clocks, it also has a slight connection to his 2010 novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de

Charlotte Brontë: Cinderella or ugly sister?

Preparations for next year’s bicentennial celebrations of the birth of Charlotte Brontë haven’t exactly got off to a flying start. At Haworth Parsonage the Brontë Society is in disarray after Bonnie Greer, its resigning president, used one of her Jimmy Choo shoes as a gavel to try to bring the membership to order, and subsequently

Is City on Fire just a box set masquerading as a novel?

Ninety pages into the juggernaut that is City on Fire, I begin to think that this is really a box set masquerading as a novel. As such it will be great. A New York setting, a cast that’s a Noah’s Ark migrant mix (from Afro to Vietnamese), a gripping crime investigation and a historical and

Mary Beard minds her S, P, Q and R

Having rattled and routed Mark Antony and his bewitching Egyptian at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, Octavian was on his way home to Rome when he was confronted by some punter. The man produced a talking raven, which obligingly squawked, ‘Greetings, Caesar, our victorious commander!’ Octavian was delighted at this evidence of loyalty,

The polyphonous Babel of global music

‘Following custom, when the Siamese conquered the Khmer they carried off much of the population, including most of their musicians, to be resettled in what is now Thailand.’ The history of music isn’t a story of chords and scores, instruments or their players. Music’s story is one of wars, invasions and revolutions, religion, monarchy and

Green is the colour of happiness

According to this wonderfully thought-provoking book, human attachment to plants was much more evident in the 19th century than it is now. In those days people showed genuine wonder at their ‘strange existences and unquantifiable powers’, especially the British, who fashioned the most ambitious glass building of the age —the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park

Alex Massie

Sport’s first celebrity: W.G. Grace

Should you wish to have a good copy of the 1916 edition of Wisden, cricket’s annual bible, you should be prepared to part with at least £5,000 and, quite possibly, much more than that. This reflects its rarity — the Great War ensured that the almanac had a limited print run — but also the