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The curse of Cain
When police were called to a block of flats in north London at the beginning of 2002, they expected to…
Missing the big picture
In 1953, Francis Bacon’s friends Lucian Freud and Caroline Blackwood were concerned about the painter’s health. His liver was in…
Hard times for the arts
As readers of a certain age will realise, Looking for a New England derives its title from ‘A New England’,…
No room at the top
‘Whatever your background,’ Margaret Thatcher told the Sun’s readers in 1983, she was determined that ‘you have a chance to…
Apocalypse then
Tragically, the current pandemic lends this sparkling study of London in its most decisive century a grim topicality — for…
No regrets
Kim Philby once remarked to the journalist Murray Sayle that ‘to betray, you must first belong. I never belonged’. Kim,…
Anonymous alcoholics
Mick Herron has been called ‘the John le Carré of his generation’ by the crime writer Val McDermid, and in…
The monk’s tale
In an essay for Prospect a few years back the writer Leo Benedictus noticed how many contemporary novels used what…
Rich man, bankrupt, thief
‘Everyone’s heard of Ghislaine Maxwell,’ says the blurb for Power: The Maxwells, a podcast series launched last month. ‘But there’s…
Misery handed on
What happens to a child raised without love? This is the agonising question that the American lawyer Justine Cowan braces…
Unlived lives
Francis Spufford was already admired as a non-fiction writer when he published his prize-winning first novel, On Golden Hill, in…
It wasn’t rocket science Jay Elwes
In the summer of 2012, a man was walking near Jabal Shashabo, a Syrian rebel enclave, when he spotted a…
The triggers of memory
Can you remember when you heard about 9/11? Chances are you’ll be flooded instantly with memories — not only where…
In no woman’s land
As a child, I loved the Ladybird ‘People at Work’ series. I had the ones on the fireman, the policeman,…
Cold and inhospitable
Like this author, I was happily snowbound at a beloved grandparent’s house during the big freeze that began on Boxing…
A bundle of woe
It seems to have become a virtual orthodoxy of the academic and publishing worlds that history and fiction now have…
Looking back at Brexit
Robert Tombs’s new book is not long: 165 pages of argument, unadorned by maps or images. But brevity is good,…
God’s architects
The surroundings of the Crimea Memorial Church in Istanbul are ‘little better than a dump’, wrote the British embassy chaplain…
The invisible man
Of the handful of things we can establish about Willis Wu, the protagonist of Charles Yu’s second novel, the most…
The cowboy and the cop
Detective Inspector Jim Stringer is back. This is a York novel, or rather a Yorkshire crime novel. The LNER railway…
A burnt-out case
Those who best remember Dr Anthony Clare (1942-2007) for his broadcasting are firmly reminded by this biography that we didn’t…
Cruelty and chaos
Karachi, Pakistan’s troubled heart, is known to cast a seductive spell over residents and visitors alike. In Karachi Vice, the…
Shades of meaning
This is a big book about a minor painting — a double portrait of John Bankes, aged about 16 (the…
Only revolution will do
After the death of George Floyd last year, and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests around the world, racism is…
The art of the steal
Making one’s fortune in Occupied Paris was largely a matter of knowing the right people: in fact, the further to…
