More from Books
One who got away
In 1694 London’s streets echoed with a call to the piratical life: Come all you brave boys, whose courage is…
The road to Weimar
Has it ever occurred to you that the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 might have won us the war? Until…
The lives of others
Strange, when your own life flatlines, the way in which other lives become suddenly more interesting. I have been retreating…
Giving the game away
This is not a rip-roaring, gonzo gambling adventure. By page 66 this cautious, thoughtful author has still never played a…
A troubled past
A decade ago — eheu fugaces labuntur anni — Stuart Evers’s debut story collection, Ten Stories About Smoking, was one…
Brains and beauty
There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…
Some like it hot
These days it is as hard to imagine Sichuanese food without chillies as it is to imagine Italian food without…
Wheels on fire
Formula One motor racing is the perennial, worldwide contest that most reliably gratifies hero-worshipping, power-worshipping, money-worshipping, technology-worshipping ghouls, and some…
Will she, won’t she?
Publishers everywhere are looking for the new Sally Rooney, which is odd since as far as I know the old…
The road to Rome
Matthew Kneale is much drawn to people of the past. In his award-winning English Passengers, he captured the sensibilities of…
Playing tag and Pooh sticks
We live in an urban world. It’s a statistical fact. The great outdoors for most of us is a thing…
The thrill of the chase
A guide to reading in lockdown. My involvement with crime and mystery fiction started when I was four. The first…
Courting danger
When Queen Alexandra chose her ladies in waiting she prudently surrounded herself with elderly and plainish ones, who did not…
Child of nature
Dara McAnulty is a teenage naturalist from Northern Ireland. He has autism; so do his brother, sister and mother —…
Middle-aged thrills
Beth, the protagonist of Joanna Briscoe’s The Seduction, reminded me of Clare in Tessa Hadley’s debut, Accidents in the Home.…
All things considered
What does Jony Ive, the designer of Apple’s iPhone, have in common with Peter Perez Burdett, the first Englishman to…
Northern noir
It is winter in north Yorkshire. On the brink of New Year, Jake, a laconic, isolated former farmhand in his…
Silent witnesses
History is only as good as its sources. It is limited largely to what has survived of written records, and…
Prepared for the worst
This book could not have been published at a better time — nor, in a way, at a worse time.…
Feeling left behind
In her 2010 novel So Much for That, Lionel Shriver examined the American healthcare system with a spiky sensitivity. Big…
Reports of its death are exaggerated
These days the world seems to end with staggering regularity. From the financial crisis to Brexit to Trump to a…
Together and apart
Twins are literary dynamite. For writers, they’re perfect for thrashing out notions of free will, the pinballing of cause and…
Movers and shakers
What have the Akkadians ever done for us? As it turns out, rather a lot, as Philip Matyszak reveals in…
The pain of forgetting
‘Grief is the price we pay for love,’ the Queen once wrote. This memoir is steeped in the pain of…
Random souvenirs
Those who have been on creative writing courses may be familiar with the ‘I remember’ exercise. The two words become…
