Book Review
Sparks, glitterballs and masterworks
The greatest works of fiction published this year
Fast food and stolen goods
The Critic Narrated: Episode Seven, with Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Daisy Dunn and Michael Prodger
Murders for late November
From Shakespeare to Agatha Christie, crime novels invoke the genre’s heritage, sometimes ably and sometimes not
Her story repeats itself
Hidden Lessons is filled with clichéd phrasing and, even worse, predictable and clichéd thinking
The scatalogical subversive
Magritte’s work is no more socially potent than dog-mess on a doorstep
Rumours of a crime
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a flawed man, but he should be allowed to be condemned by his words
What’s told is news again
Not much has changed since Philip Gibbs’ forgotten classic lifted the lid on early 20th century Fleet Street
Our deepest, darkest fears
The transgressive, transmedial and transnational nature of the Gothic genre
Good-natured amateurishness
British musical theatre has nothing on the American slickness
Overarching view of the air war
These two volumes are a solid starting point for understanding the British and Commonwealth air war