In February 1965, the civil rights activist Malcolm X visited Smethwick, in the Midlands, where the Conservative-run council was planning to buy up houses to stop the area becoming a “coloured ghetto”.... Read more »
When Gunn Haven, an eminent professor of astrophysics at an urban university, moves to rural Denmark, she tells a local newspaper: “It’s to do with the sky.” From the outset of Range,... Read more »
‘There’s an anxiety in declaring oneself a Kylie fan,” wrote the late San Francisco poet Kevin Killian (who nonetheless once published an entire collection devoted to the singer). Despite her remarkable longevity,... Read more »
Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley (HarperCollins, £22)This, the first Miss Marple continuation novel, must have been a more difficult undertaking than a new Hercule Poirot; furnished by Christie... Read more »
In the 2003 novel Yellow Dog, Xan Meo is set upon by two men in a pub who cosh him over the head: “Like the statue of a fallen tyrant, he crashed... Read more »
One tedious aspect of Britain’s post-imperial melancholia is the number of amateur historians who would rather we stopped going on about our role in the slave trade. Isn’t it all in the past? Weren’t... Read more »
We learn about the murder of the Chopra clan’s shifty, crude, charismatic patriarch Laxman in the opening pages of The Complex. Twenty-five years have passed, but the stain on this once-respectable Punjabi family... Read more »
Charles Spencer’s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a fascinating document that tells us a little about Diana and a great... Read more »
Kate Mosse’s new book is a love-song to West Sussex, part of a series designed to bring out its authors’ personal connections to a home landscape. It began last year, with Michael Morpurgo... Read more »