book reviews and features
Henning Mankell: After the Fire review - of death and redemption
Sunday, 08 October 2017
The dour, reclusive disgraced doctor Fredrik Welin has appeared once before in Henning Mankell’s work, in The... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards 2017: The Winners
Wednesday, 04 October 2017
At a festive ceremony on Tuesday night at The Hospital Club in central London, the winners... Read more... |
Orhan Pamuk: Istanbul, Memories and the City review – a masterpiece upgraded
Sunday, 01 October 2017
Along with Balzac’s Paris and Dickens’s London, Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul now ranks as one of the most illustrious author-trademarked cities in literary history. Yet, as... Read more... |
Roddy Doyle: Smile review - return of the repressed
Sunday, 24 September 2017
Although he made his name with the generally upbeat grooves and licks of his Barrytown Trilogy, Roddy Doyle has often played Irish family and social life as a blues full of sorrow and regret. In... Read more... |
Claire Tomalin: A Life of My Own review - the biographer on herself
Sunday, 24 September 2017
The title says it all, or at least quite a lot. Luminously intelligent, an exceptionally hard worker, bilingual in French, a gifted... Read more... |
Anne Applebaum: Red Famine review - hope around a heart of darkness
Sunday, 17 September 2017
Hands both sensitive and surgical are needed to guide a reader into the heart of the 20th century’s second biggest genocide and out again. Anne Applebaum is the right person for a... Read more... |
Adam Macqueen: The Lies of the Land review - light, but enlightening
Sunday, 17 September 2017
We are now firmly in the post-truth era as defined by Oxford Dictionaries: "adjective - relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping... Read more... |
Robert Harris: Munich review - reselling Hitler
Saturday, 16 September 2017
Robert Harris’s first book about Hitler told the story of the hoax diaries which seduced Rupert Murdoch and Hugh Trevor-Roper. After Selling Hitler (1986) came Fatherland (1992... Read more... |
John le Carré: A Legacy of Spies review - the master in twilight mood
Sunday, 10 September 2017
Over his long career – 23 novels, memoirs, his painfully believable narratives adapted into extraordinary films (10 for the big screen) and for television – John le Carré has created a world that... Read more... |
Extract: Peter Brook - Tip of the Tongue: Reflections on Language and Meaning
Sunday, 10 September 2017
A long time ago when I was very young, a voice hidden deep within me whispered, "Don’t take anything for granted. Go and see for yourself." This little nagging murmur has led me to so... Read more... |
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Off the Rails review - go for the scenery, not the script
Mamma Mia! hovers unhelpfully over every frame of Off the Rails, a road...
Reclaiming Amy, BBC Two review - Winehouse family and friend...
“My worst fear? What am I scared of?” Amy Winehouse ponders. She pauses thoughtfully: “Myself.”
Ten years to the day since she died, ...
Album: Anne-Marie - Therapy
Anne-Marie Nicholson is a hard-working young woman from Essex whose career description is “Global Girl-next-door Pop Star”. She has incrementally...
Le Comte Ory, Garsington Opera review - high musical style a...
Play it straight and you’ll get more laughs: that’s the standard advice on great operatic comedies like the masterpieces of the Gilbert &...
Album: Jackson Browne - Downhill From Everywhere
It’s hard to believe that it’s almost 50 years since I splurged a day’s Saturday pay on For Everyman, Jackson Browne’s second...
Lava, Bush Theatre review - poetic writing, mesmerically per...
What’s in a name? In Benedict Lombe’s incendiary...
Riders of Justice review - revenge, coincidence and the mean...
All events are products of a series of preceding events. Or is life just a chain of coincidences? And if so, what’s the point in anything?...
Hamlet, Windsor Theatre Royal review - the age is out of joi...
So it wasn’t Cinderella but Hamlet who was...