reading
How not to behave at a London gentleman’s club
After a 5 a.m. start, I arrived at the departure gate in Nice airport to discover there was an air…
We’re losing the ability to read
A recent American study, called ‘They Don’t Read Very Well’, analyses the reading comprehension abilities of English literature students at…
How my father’s bedtime stories shaped my life
It’s half an hour before lights out when my dad arrives at my bedroom door holding Roald Dahl’s Danny the…
Letters: Britain doesn’t have a ‘two-tier’ policing problem
Less is more Sir: While I wholeheartedly agree with Toby Young’s observation that ‘more censorship would make things worse, not…
Why children have stopped reading
It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent…
The rise of the competitive book list
I’m a hopeless technophobe. I dislike the stylish laptop I’m using and its subdued pad pad pad. I still long…
Diary
A princess of Hanover wrote in her diary: ‘My 30th birthday. There must be some mistake.’ Substitute 30th for 80th…
Autocrat and autodidact
The link between mass-murdering dictators and the gentle occupation of reading and writing books is a curious one, but it…
Page turner
How TikTok can make a book a bestseller
How I learned to love audio books
According to a charity called Fight For Sight, 38 per cent of people who’ve been using screens more during lockdown…
High life
New York I received a letter from a long-time Spectatorreader, James Hackett, enquiring about books I am reading. It is…
Low life
‘Yes, I will have a coffee,’ said the van driver. He’d driven down to the south of France from Devon.…
Open book
If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read
Lydia Davis, like an inspirational teacher, tempts her readers into more reading
A good indicator of just how interesting and alluring Lydia Davis’s Essays proved might be my recent credit card statement.…
My first world war obsession
My reactionary first world war reading jag continues. The literature is vast, but so is my capacity and fascination. I…
Dickens and Agatha Christie made my childhood bearable
Girl with Dove is a memoir by Sally Bayley, a writer who teaches at Oxford University, of growing up in…
World Book Day is here again. God help us
For parents of primary school children, the first Thursday in March has got to be the worst day of the…
The tyranny of the bedtime story
All surveys carried out by retail businesses with a view to generating press coverage should be treated with extreme caution,…
Low life
The army patrols at Nice airport go around three abreast, steely-eyed, fingers on the trigger. They walk slowly and scrutinise…
Low life
Nice airport was more or less deserted. Two-and-a-half hours early for the easyJet flight to Gatwick, I had a leisurely…
These I have loved
In the preface to his great collection of essays The Dyer’s Hand, W.H. Auden claimed: ‘I prefer a critic’s notebooks…
High life
Welcome to 2015, the year that speaking and writing freely had to stop. Anything that might cause trauma to anyone…
Farewell notebook
So we are all going to have to pay for fatties to have stomach bands and bypasses, are we? It…
An open book
Kindle highlights turn the lonely pleasures of reading into a communal event
Real life
‘Question 2. In which year did the Berlin Wall come down?’ shouted the quizmaster. And then he repeated this with…
