One muggy afternoon in June 2010, Don Heathfield and his wife, Ann, were relaxing over a bottle of champagne with their two sons, Tim and Alex, when they heard a loud knocking... Read more »
Can anything new be said about the second world war? Unexpectedly the answer is yes. Here are just a few of the surprising facts that I learned from this revelatory book. The... Read more »
Joe Dunthorne tells us he originally envisaged this book as a story of his grandmother’s childhood escape from the Nazis; the reality turned out to be more complex. Narrated with the twists... Read more »
The top blurb on Fara Dabhoiwala’s new book describes it as a “remarkable global history of free speech”. But it isn’t, and throwing in an interesting chapter on the press in British-occupied... Read more »
When Han Kang published her International Booker-winning The Vegetarian (2015), translated by Deborah Smith, about a South Korean housewife who gives up meat and wants to become a tree, the novel slotted... Read more »
Through all the blood and ice of Russian history, the national music has been a balm. Composers and performers have given a voice to the soul of their people, in all its... Read more »
I love the amorous mayhem of Handel’s operas, but have always had my doubts about his oratorios, especially the Messiah. First there’s the bossy compulsion to stand during the “Hallelujah” chorus, just... Read more »
“My dream is that people’s eyes will be opened instinctively to their surroundings,†says Simon Jenkins at the end of his new book. “I want people to point at buildings, laugh, cry... Read more »
Years ago, a man who was then my fiancé gave me a mourning ring, inscribed with the name and dates of birth and death of a Frenchwoman who lived in the mid-eighteenth... Read more »