Book review
All together now
The Great War involved the civilian population like no previous conflict. ‘Men, women and children, factory, workshop and army —…
Garden of earthly delights
It was Hazlitt who said of Hogarth that his pictures ‘breathe a certain close, greasy, tavern air’, and the same…
The imitable Jeeves
For as long as I can remember — I take neither pleasure nor pride in the admission — I have…
Dancing to a different tune
Carlos Acosta, the greatest dancer of his generation, grew up in Havana as the youngest of 11 black children. Money…
Winning through
‘Experiences aren’t given us to be “got over”, otherwise they would hardly be experiences.’ The opening sentence of the first…
Off the beaten track
This is probably not a book for those whose interest in Spain gravitates towards such contemporary phenomena as the films…
Neither saint nor sage
The inventor of ‘doublethink’ was consistently inconsistent in his own political views, says A.N. Wilson. And no fun at all
Exposing the art mafia
‘S is for Spoof.’ There it is on page 86, a full-page reproduction of a Nat Tate drawing, sold at…
Sheer genius
What, one wonders, will John Eliot Gardiner be chiefly remembered for? Perhaps, by many who have worked with him, for…
In Papa’s footsteps
‘In the years since 1961 Hemingway’s reputation as “the outstanding author since the death of Shakespeare” shrank to the extent…
A brainy delight
The Japanese are sometimes said to suffer from ‘outsider person shock’ (gaijin shokku) when travelling abroad. Recently in London we…
Ashes to ashes
‘I cannot describe to you what a curious note of brutality a bomb has,’ said one woman who lived through…
Bertie Wooster in the commentary box
There can be a strong strain of self-parody in even the greatest commentators. When Henry Blofeld describes the progress of…
‘I shall surely sing’
A few weeks ago, I was wandering with a friend around West London when our conversation turned to the reliable…
Clash of the Titans
This is an odd book: interesting, informative, intelligent, but still decidedly odd. It is a history of the Victorian era…
The courage of her convictions
In 2012 a Taleban gunman, infuriated by Malala Yousafzai’s frequent television appearances insisting that girls had a right to education,…
On your marks…
One day there simply won’t be any strange byways of the English language left to write quirky little books about.…
Divinely decadent
With an eye to the blasphemy underlying some of the loveliest Renaissance painting, Honor Clerk will be choosing her Christmas cards more carefully this year
To cull or not to cull?
Lord Arran was responsible for the bill to legalise homosexuality and a bill to protect badgers from gassing and terrier-baiting.…
Six of the best
When one notices the first symptoms of senile dementia (forgetting names, trying to remember the purpose of moving from one…
Tireless tuft-hunting
The novelist David Plante is French-Québécois by ancestry, grew up in a remote Francophone parish in Yankee New England and…
Diplomatic meltdown
In pre-1914 cosmopolitan society, everyone seemed to be related — ambassadors as well as monarchs. But increased militarisation was fast obliterating old family ties, says Jane Ridley
Breaking omertà
According to the medical historian Professor Sonu Shamdasani, Sigmund Freud was not the best, nor actually the most interesting, psychoanalyst…
From underdog to top dog
When we think of David and Goliath, we think of a young man, not very big, who has a fight…
Salad days
The early 1990s in Russia were hungry years. At the time, I was a student, too idle to barter and…
