Alone and defenceless: the tragic death of Captain Cook
Striding ashore unarmed showed courage that bordered on recklessness. But it was a kind of theatre Cook relished on his travels - and, famously, it didn’t always work
Triumph and tragedy
England’s 1966 World Cup triumph owed much to the team’s dedicated manager, loved by his players but monstrously treated by those in charge of the FA
The long and the short of it
There are many vagaries about measurements, says Claire Cock-Starkey: the length of the foot has often changed, but British shoe sizes hark back to the reign of Edward II
Brave men in small boats
‘I found this story by accident,’ begins Julia Jones’s Uncommon Courage, referring to documents belonging to her late father that…
What the Georgians did for us
‘The two most fascinating subjects in the universe are sex and the 18th century,’ declared the novelist Brigid Brophy when…
The Great War was enough to make grown men weep
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo it took a mere six weeks for the diplomats of Europe’s…
Does a stick insect count as a pet?
What is it that distinguishes humans from other animals? The default answer nowadays is tediously misanthropic, but a more interesting…
Jan Morris talks to herself — about music, irony and cats
To Jan Morris, I am anathema. That goes, too, for David Attenborough. It is a word that this unarguably great…
The rich literature of the game of poker
According to the subtitle, this is a collection of ‘short stories of long nights at the poker table’. Were that…
A disarming heroine
The name Freya is derived from the old Norse word for ‘spouse’, perhaps Odin’s. As a goddess she is variously…
To the ends of the earth
What’s in a name? The identity of the author offers a clue to one of the themes of this intriguing…
‘It’s always wrong to starve’
‘My mother and father named me Aron, but my father said they should have named me What Have You Done,…
Decidedly fishy
Books ought to be able to stand on their own, but perhaps it is important to know this about David…
See how clever
Two men walk into an ice cream parlour in Austin, Texas, order the three teenage girls working there to undress,…
The worm turns
Something odd happened between the advance publicity for this book and its printed appearance. Trailed as addressing the troubled history…
Memos to self
It would be perverse not to succumb to the temptation to write this review as a list. So, the first…
X and his complexes
‘X’ is in ‘the Situation’: Joseph O’Neill, author of the clever and superb Netherland, hereby lets us know that his…
Doing the Woburn Walk
The Bloomsbury of the title refers to the place, not the group. The group didn’t have a poet. ‘I would…
Grappling with the impossible subject
‘Everybody could see that this man was not a “monster”, but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he…
The good companion
P.J. Kavanagh, if not dismissed or relegated, is often shall we say bracketed, as a ‘nature poet’. The truth is,…
Anthem for lost youth
Patrick McGuinness’s prose trembles on the edge of poetry, occasionally indeed tipping gently over into it. This is thoroughly characteristic…
A hidden gem
One of the many charms of this book is its sheer unexpectedness, which makes it hard to review, for to…
Powerful punch lines
Vernon Scannell was a thief, a liar, a deserter, a bigamist, a fraud, an alcoholic, a woman-beater and a coward.…
Grand old master of modernism
How minor is minor? ‘Rings a bell’ was more or less the response of two English literature graduates, now successful…
Dishing the dirt
Is poetry in good enough health to be made fun of in this way? The irony is that this long,…
