Stupidity, no question, can be just as rich and subtle as its opposite. Three and a half decades on, I still sometimes meditate on what a school friend of mine said in a... Read more »
What if the protagonist of a novel was not a single person but a couple? Damian Barr takes on this challenge, and he’s found a historic couple who make the ideal source material.... Read more »
The American author Louis Sachar’s most celebrated book, 1998’s YA novel Holes, was a huge word-of-mouth success on both sides of the Atlantic. Its short, punchy chapters tell the story of plump,... Read more »
When the title of Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir, Frankly, was first announced, I had my doubts. Partly, of course, it was a touching nod to her late friend, the comic Janey Godley. Godley’s... Read more »
AC Benson is remembered today, if at all, for having edited three volumes of Queen Victoria’s letters and for writing Land of Hope and Glory to accompany Elgar’s first Pomp and Circumstance... Read more »
The second floor of 10 Rue Lepsius, tucked away in the old Greek quarter of Alexandria above a brothel, was, for three decades, the literary focal point of the city. Entering the... Read more »
When was the last time you stopped to say thank you to a tree? Perhaps it’s something we should do more often. After all, we owe them everything, from the air we breathe... Read more »
How influential is a name? This is the question underpinning The Names, which opens with Cora taking her newborn son to register his birth. Her abusive husband Gordon wants his son to... Read more »
Some years ago, a colleague on the Irish Times took the columnist Nuala O’Faolain to lunch. Nuala was famous, and feared, as a controversialist who specialised in attacking popular pieties, unless it was the... Read more »