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…
Daddy, we hardly knew you
The lefty hereditary peer has few equals as a figure of fun, in life or literature. The late Tony Benn…
Home truths
There were several times when reading A Dog’s Life that I felt as if I’d fallen into a time warp.…
The cardinal and the con artist
You usually know where you are with a book that promises the story ‘would violate the laws of plausibility’ if…
A modern Mark Twain
The American writer, Charles Portis, has had what some novelists — the more purist ones — might regard as an…
Lady in waiting
The actor David Niven was once badgered by the American columnist William F. Buckley to introduce him to Marc Chagall,…
Let the elves do the work
As I sit here in my Sarah Lund Fair Isle sweater, polishing my boxed sets of Borgen and nibbling on…
As grand as the Grand Canyon itself
This book begins with Simon Winchester becoming a US citizen two years ago: ‘I swore a solemn oath before a…
Getting the claws out
The New Yorker has always had a peculiar affinity with cats, perhaps because they have a lot in common —…
Black and beyond
When Prince Albert died in 1861, aged 42, Queen Victoria, after briefly losing the use of her legs, ordered that…
Cheap and cheerful
Mrs Thatcher was widely believed to have said that ‘any man over the age of 26 who finds himself on…
Men of mystery
People, they say, want different things from a book over the summer than they do the rest of the year.…
