Books
Wolf bites back
X.Trapnel on the latest literary feuds and fancies
Sissy porn and trans dirty laundry
Louise Perry reviews Females by Andrea Long Chu
Sharing the pleasure in poetry
James Booth reviews ‘Somewhere Becoming Rain: Collected Writings on Philip Larkin’
A keen nose and sharp prose
David Womersley reviews Waugh on Wine by Auberon Waugh
Why do we review books?
D.J. Taylor reflects on nearly four decades of hard graft on the literary pages
Airline Maps: A century of art and design
An enjoyable visual book that acts as a history of aviation
A good read but variable as history
A Short History of London is good on architecture but a more sophisticated analysis is needed
Cyber court
Soon, technology will mean the judge and the parties in a legal action can file claims and evidence online
Confessions of the new Grub Street
The money is bad, the hours long and the white wine copious and cheap
Shed and buried
X.Trapnel on cakes, fakes and stocking fillers
The man who wasn’t Monday
True courage has no regard for personal reputation
How the government’s maternity bill seeks to deny the reality of sex
The avoidance of the word “woman” in relation to pregnancy is part of a wider assault on women’s rights from transgender activists
Bang, bang, I’m dead
‘The worst thing about my condition is that it makes me feel like the world’s biggest wimp’ – Dominic Hilton opens up about his lifelong phobia
Britain’s love affair with port
Henry Jeffrey’s recommends a selection of port for Christmas 2020
Is live music in Britain doomed?
It would be little short of a tragedy if our music industry ends up being finished off by the mismanagement of a a vulgar little virus
Faith Masks
The ideological significance of face masks, the new vestiture of the faithful
Are men losing the chance to love other men?
The modern trend to write off male camaraderie as “bromance” is doing great harm to young men
Biography and the perils of possessive families
Nigel Jones, a chastened practitioner of writing biographies, warns that writing someone’s life can be a dangerous venture
Doggy style
Bestialists, radical agriculturalists and fashionable intellectuals will enjoy this book, especially the pictures
Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies
The reaction to the BBC Woman’s Hour interview with Zara Mohammed exposes the cliquishness of contemporary feminists