abuse
From tragedy to mockery: Munichs, by David Peace, reviewed
The devastating crash at Munich-Riem airport in 1959 haunts Manchester United fans to this day. Peace defies anyone to read his novel and use ‘Munichs’ as an insult ever again
Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems
Frank and Gail Zappa’s eldest child describes how the endless battles between her manipulative mother and misogynist father in the 1970s blight the family to this day
Escape into fantasy: My Heavenly Favourite, by Lucas Rijneveld, reviewed
The 14-year-old daughter of a Dutch farmer is pursued by a paedophile vet and tries hard to combat the abuse by imagining she’s a bird
A redemptive fable: Night Watch, by Jayne Anne Phillips, reviewed
Set in the Appalachian Mountains, the novel centres around a family struggling to survive domestic abuse and abandonment in the aftermath of the American civil war
Britney Spears is back with a vengeance
After years of abuse and being reduced to the status of child-robot, the singer is back on track with soaring album sales and a smash-hit memoir
Time to start popping the pills
No one does agonising quite like Mobeen Azhar. In several BBC documentaries now, he’s set his face to pensive, gone…
No easy exit
A young woman and an older, married man fall passionately in love in the last days of the GDR – but abuse and jealousy soon turn things sour
Escape from drudgery
Shunned by his father and his peers because of his homosexuality, Édouard Louis (born Eddy Bellegueule in 1992) left his village…
Rooney tunes
It’s official: television has a new genre. Its features include leisurely half-hour episodes, plenty of literary chat, several scenes set…
An awful warning
Sins of My Father begins with an ending. Describing her 61-year-old parent’s final desperate flight from a life of vibrant…
Mawkish melodrama
Rose Tremain’s 15th novel begins with a favoured schmaltzy image of high Victoriana: it is a night (if not dark…
Darkness visible
Translating the story of Jimmy Savile to stage or screen is a creative minefield, says Jonathan Maitland, who knows from first-hand experience
In a state of flux
‘Something is afoot,’ wrote the academic philosopher Kathleen Stock in 2018: Beyond the academy, there’s a huge and impassioned discussion…
‘It was like a survivors’ circle’
Michael Hann talks to Corey Taylor, front man of ‘the most revolting band in the world’, about PTSD, Donald Trump and life after alcoholism
Being Woody Allen
It’s been tough recently being Woody Allen, something that didn’t look too easy to begin with. Last year Amazon breached…
Tales out of school
‘James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel,’ says Hilary Mantel on the cover of English Monsters, which,…
The best way to escape my abusive family was to write novels
Early on in Amy Tan’s 1989 bestseller, The Joy Luck Club, a Chinese concubine slices a chunk of flesh from…
Moral maze
Una is a psychological drama about a woman who was abused by a man when she was 12, and who…
Sins of the fathers
Damian Thompson admires a Chilean film about paedophile priests which, unlike Spotlight, dares to explore social and psychological complexities
The Spectator’s notes
Here is a thought for all those Tory MPs calculating their personal advantage in the forthcoming EU referendum: unless the…
Club class won’t fly any more
I’m getting a lot of abuse on Twitter for saying that having been a member of the Bullingdon is more…
I’m utterly sickened by this story of a man trying to talk to a woman on a train
What can we as a society do about the relentless harassment of women by terrifying men? Menacing men, threatening men,…
Sistema’s secrets
An explosive new book uncovers abuse at the heart of one of classical music’s most revered institutions. Damian Thompson investigates
Is looking at a nude photo of Jennifer Lawrence really the same thing as stealing it?
‘If you click on Jennifer Lawrence’s naked pictures,’ said the headline on the Guardian’s website, ‘you’re perpetuating her abuse.’ That…
Sins of the fathers
I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed this book. It’s been a while since I admitted something of…
