From the outset, Shark Drunk (pleasurably) triggers memories of encounters with other ‘man and the sea’ books. Of course, there is the famous one. And Moby-Dick. Then there are the classics by Strøksnes’s compatriot Thor Heyerdahl, and Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Redmond O’Hanlon’s Trawler. Most splendid of all is John Steinbeck’s The Log from the […]
Yes, alas, the title is printed RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR in unspaced block capitals, as are the chapter headings, for no apparent reason. The other immediately noticeable feature of Philip Hoare’s new book is that its pages are dotted with grainy black-and-white photographs, in the manner pioneered by W G Sebald. As it turns out, it’s a book […]
Angry chefs create angry reviewers and Anthony Warner scores double here. First, because his anger is so bloody righteous, and second, because what I really want to do is just type out a list of all his arguments and then stand over you while you read it, jabbing my finger and shouting ‘See? See?’ and ‘Have you got to the bit about Gwyneth Paltrow’s mouthwash?’ (coconut oil, which may have antimicrobial
Between 1870 and 1914 approximately 450 American girls married titled Europeans, more than a hundred of them bagging British aristocrats. Gossip columnists considered this an invasion, not so much because of the numbers but because these young women were better educated, better dressed, sassier, often sexier and certainly wealthier than their British sisters. It was […]
Anyone curious about what is going on in those parts of the country that never receive any attention from commentators, politicians or policymakers – and who might like to further their understanding of why a majority voted to leave the EU – should read David McKie’s wise, funny and humane account of travels through the […]
Any portrait of an Indian prince or princess, from the 15th century to the 20th, is likely to show the sitter draped in fabulous jewellery: ropes of pearls the size of marbles; studded and enamelled belts; daggers and turban ornaments; gold bracelets tied around the upper and lower arms with thick gold thread; anklets and […]
The Amazons of popular imagination, as descended from Greek mythology, are a beguiling, terrifying nation of warrior women. They cut off their right breasts to enable ease of movement. They mate once a year with local tribes, keeping the resulting girls and abandoning the boys. Their queens encounter the great Greek heroes, in some versions […]
It is always interesting to read the finished work of a writer whom you met while he was still doing his research, particularly when his book addresses one of the most controversial sociocultural subjects in the UK today – Muslims in Britain. James Fergusson’s Al-Britannia, My Country is a journey and an inquiry into the […]
No book Nicola Barker writes is remotely like a book by anyone else, which is one of the many reasons to celebrate her. Also, no two books by Nicola Barker are doing remotely the same thing, which is another. So you never know quite what you’re in for. And H(A)PPY, even by her own extravagant […]
Neel Mukherjee’s third novel is made up of five narratives and the book’s architecture is revealed gradually: the odd-numbered sections are linked to each other, as are the even-numbered ones. Any connection to the novel sequences of V S Naipaul – A Way in the World and In a Free State – is, as the […]
Three of this summer’s debut collections of short stories address confinement and limitation in various ways. The most obvious treatment of these themes comes in Curtis Dawkins’s The Graybar Hotel, about prison life in the American Midwest, written by a convict serving a life sentence for murder. Although Dawkins no longer has recourse to the […]
‘This book’, writes Keith Lowe, ‘is an attempt to survey the major changes – both destructive and constructive – that took place in the world because of the Second World War.’ It is an ambitious project encompassing many different topics and fields of history: the Cold War; colonial empires; science and technology; the world economy; […]
The Congo Free State, which existed from 1885 to 1908 as the personal dominion of Leopold II of Belgium, is infamous for its ‘red rubber’ atrocities, which excited the condemnation of figures as various as Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Roger Casement. Estimates of the number of deaths caused by Leopold’s ruthless […]
Some seventy years after the end of the Second World War, books on this conflict crowd the shelves of libraries, shops and studies, so historians are obliged to search for unknown, or rather underexplored, stories to tell for the general reader. Now Hilda Kean has written The Great Cat and Dog Massacre, a book with […]
Folk memory of the Spanish flu, which at the end of the Great War wiped out many of those who survived the conflict and many more who had not been near the front line, lived on in families for decades afterwards. In mine it centred on Uncle Fred Shaw, who married Aunt Betty in 1916 […]
So-called microhistory – examining a tightly defined area of the past – is currently all the rage. Rosemary Ashton’s study of the stifling summer of 1858 demonstrates its attractions. The formula does not prove overly constricting because events took place during these few months the importance of which long outlasted the summer itself. Confining her […]
The Palace of Versailles was built by Louis XIV to satisfy his love of hunting and country life, his taste for grandeur and his aversion to Paris. It was not just a royal palace, however. It was also a temple of the arts, intended – through the beauty of its gardens, sculptures, architecture and collections […]
This is the story of a beautiful – and in some ways improbable – friendship. John Fleming and Hugh Honour were brilliant art historians who lived in a magical, slightly run-down villa near Lucca. They made a perfect life for themselves, but there was nothing remotely dilettantish about them: they were ferociously hard-working and each […]
The conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867–1957), the sesquicentennial of whose birth is commemorated this year, combined unsurpassed passion with refinement in musical performance. Despite his renown for fidelity to the written notes, Toscanini always conducted from memory, as he was too myopic to perform without glasses and too vain to wear them in front of audiences. […]
The title of Mona Lisa: The People and the Painting is slightly misleading. You might assume that the ‘People’ refers to the people standing in front of the painting – dumbfounded, smartphones aloft, blocking your way – and that this would be a book produced for a popular audience, written in the manner of Louis […]
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‘In matters of the heart, cats are at the heart of the matter.’
So says @OSoden on the explosion of cat mania in the early twentieth century.
Oliver Soden - Pussies Galore
Oliver Soden: Pussies Galore - Catland: Feline Enchantment and the Making of the Modern World by Kathryn Hughes
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A recent inquiry found that British security services had effectively licensed the IRA assassin known as Stakeknife to commit multiple murders.
@malodoherty picks apart the murky world of spying and counterespionage in Northern Ireland.
Malachi O’Doherty - Belfast Confidential
Malachi O’Doherty: Belfast Confidential - Four Shots in the Night: A True Story of Espionage, Murder and Justice ...
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‘Creative non-fiction, I am so sick of this bullshit’, says Michael Anderson, an editor of the New York Times Book Review.
@rosalyster returns to its genesis.
Rosa Lyster - Two Sides to the Story
Rosa Lyster: Two Sides to the Story - The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble Rousers, O...
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