The tragic decline of children’s literature
The other day, leafing through T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which enchanted me as a child, I was…
A meeting of misfits: Seascraper, by Benjamin Wood, reviewed
An unlikely friendship develops between a taciturn local youth and a fast-talking American film-maker in a grim coastal town in postwar Britain
We’re losing the ability to read
A recent American study, called ‘They Don’t Read Very Well’, analyses the reading comprehension abilities of English literature students at…
AI will never write good fiction
Sam Altman, Dark Lord of Chatbots (or the CEO of OpenAI as he is more conventionally known), has released another…
Finding your other half in ancient Athens
According to Aristophanes, human beings were two-bodied before Zeus split them – which is why we spend our lives perpetually searching for our missing partner
We’re all caught in the insurance trap
In they pour, one after another, cheerily thudding on to the doormat: ‘Thank you for insuring with us again! Now,…
Is it really too much to ask students to read children’s books?
The Shakespeare scholar Sir Jonathan Bate recently claimed that students are struggling to read long books. Depressingly, he’s right. I…
Bring back the stiffy!
The other day, clearing out boxes, I stumbled on a sheaf of invitations from childhood. Decorated with trains and fairies,…
More curious canine incidents: Dogs and Monsters, by Mark Haddon, reviewed
Mesmerising accounts of dogs feature in these latest stories, including Actaeon’s tragic hounds, St Antony’s comforting mutt and Laika, the husky hurled into space
Why is the government making it harder to get an au pair?
You will have heard, I am sure, of the Conservatives’ recent largesse towards working parents, as their ‘free’ childcare policy…
Back from the beyond: The Book of Love, by Kelly Link, reviewed
Three adolescents reappear in their home town on the Massachusetts coast, having been presumed dead – which is closer to the truth than their families realise
Tales to tell
Despite the seediness and threat of violence, Littlehampton was a place of neighbourly camaraderie, fondly evoked in Sally Bayley’s latest memoir
No happy endings
Traditional fairy tales are transposed to a modern setting and given a thrilling – often terrifying – twist
Storm clouds brewing
Spanning the 18th and 19th centuries, Gardner’s novel tells the story of young Neva, whose ability to predict the weather nearly ruins her
Absurdities abound
For 20 years of my adult life, I moonlighted as a private tutor. After a full day in the office…
Bloodbath in Rome
It’s not as if Julius Caesar wasn’t warned about the Ides of March. Somebody thrust a written prediction of the…
Movers and shakers
What have the Akkadians ever done for us? As it turns out, rather a lot, as Philip Matyszak reveals in…
A drag army in waiting: This Brutal House, by Niven Govinden, reviewed
Niven Govinden’s This Brutal House is set in the demi-monde of the New York vogue ball. This is an organised,…
Is there no end to the retelling of classical myths?
In the past few years there has been a flourishing of literary responses to the Trojan war. To mention a…
Beware the female stalker: Dream Sequence, by Adam Foulds, reviewed
Adam Foulds’s fourth novel, Dream Sequence, is an exquisitely concocted, riveting account of artistic ambition and unrequited love verging on…
The passions of Paulo: Enigma Variations, by André Aciman, reviewed
André Aciman’s 2007 debut novel, Call Me By Your Name, was a sensuous, captivating account of the passionate love a…
Can a paedophilic relationship ever be excused?
Sofka Zinovieff’s new novel, Putney, is an involving, beautifully written, and subtle account of an affair in the 1970s between…
The songs my father’s mistress taught me ignited my love of France
When John Julius Norwich was a boy, his father was British ambassador in Paris.School holidays were spent in the exceptionally…
The Charlie Hebdo attacks form a backdrop to a complicated love triangle in C.K. Stead’s latest novel
There has been much debate recently about what exactly constitutes ‘literary’ fiction. If the term means beguiling, gorgeously crafted novels…
In Aslan’s country
Philip Womack 1 May 2021 9:00 am
C. S. Lewis’s enchanting Chronicles of Narniaseries has, in recent years, come under critical fire. It’s racist, sexist, colonialist; blatant…