On the Cusk of austerity
A cerebral critic pleaser, a dramatic crowd pleaser, and a perennial favourite
Diversion, disruption and distinction
Being memorable and sticky guarantees a novel a long and healthy life
Iain Banks: a double life
His disturbing debut, The Wasp Factory, is being reissued this year
Eyes on the prizes — and the surprises
Every literary season has a book that comes from nowhere and seems to gallop ahead of the competition
A “lost” novel better left unfound
We’re a long way from touchstones One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera
Three novelists pushing the bloat out
Some novels still dare to leave the reader’s hand unheld — without universal success
You can’t judge a book by its cover
All novels should be like this: stripped of the necessary but boring connective tissue
Satire, sci-fi and a sting in the tale
It’s time for our annual guide to the best new fiction of the year
Puckish polymath
Italo Calvino’s imagination spanned the cosmos but his concerns were very human
A teenager, strangers and a pair of apes
Spend time inside the mind of your most eccentric, sometimes maddening friend
Not only a game
This is how it ends: the whimper, or the bang
Say it ain’t so, Joe
How democratic is a shadowy cabal conspiring to hide the fact that Biden is too frail to govern?
The incarnation of vice
Sex, gypsies, smoking, smugglers, sex, bullfighting, murder, and did we mention…sex?
Peers but not equals
Ferdinand Ries: Symphonies 1&2 (Ondine); Franz Clement: Solo violin works (Naxos)
Social media platforms are still stifling debate
Platforms like Instagram and Eventbrite should learn that a belief in biological sex does not amount to “hate”
The dark horse of Durban
The work of Roy Campbell does not deserve to be ignored
Finnish on a high note
Now, how the Helsinki has this happened?
Not amused: Victoria in her own words
Beneath the excitable phrases and endless underlining, Victoria’s correspondence doggedly promoted a coherent policy
Where the Tories must go from here
The Conservative Party must set aside backbiting in favour of building a radical political project that can appeal to young and old alike
Lucia di Lammermoor, Royal Opera House
It’s an amazing paradox that something as tawdry as opera can produce such a pure expression of what it is to be human
Infected blood and infected institutions
Decades on from the beginning of the infected blood scandal, our institutions still fail to align themselves with the truth
