Books
Miss Havisham on heroin
Natasha Green reviews Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders, by Kate Griffin
Billy Liar was fiction’s first OCD hero, yet nobody noticed
Rev Steve Morris revisits Keith Waterhouse’s forgotten classic
Brideshead Revisited at 75
In its combination of glacial beauty and lovelorn desperation, Brideshead Revisited speaks to all readers, Alexander Larman writes
Closing the books
Thomas Woodham-Smith finds the latest research is online
Our friends in court
John Bowers reviews “Enemies of the People?” by Joshua Rozenberg
Should we listen to writers about their own work?
As Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads is set to air this evening, Alexander Larman ponders the relationship between a living writer and their works
Emerging from Sri Lanka’s lockdown: a morning at Colombo’s booksheds
A S H Smyth pays a visit to one of his favourite places in Colombo
Men and women and men
John Self reviews Sorry for Your Trouble by Richard Ford, This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill and Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
The jokes must go on
Christopher Bray reviews Apropos of Nothing by Woody Allen
Me, Myself and I
The hip young authors who write about their greatest obsession – themselves
Can political biographies ever be any good?
Political memoirs can be essential, eye-popping reading if the subject is handled in the right way
The weather is racist
Standing to pee is transphobic, the police hire woke commissars and German activists re-name the weather
A double American Awakening
Katrina Gulliver delves into two new publications entitled ‘American Awakening’, and discovers that one is an exhortation, the other an ironic description of the current process of politics and society
Crooked compendium
Ms Lees offers a new take on the template, but she is walking a well-trodden path
Feminists must reject left and right
…and abused women are being let down. David Scullion speaks to Louise Perry and Julie Bindel
Fishermen’s tails
Through history, Mermaids have been treated as more real than legendary, even by those who have had a reputation to uphold
Wheeling and spieling
Thomas Woodham-Smith breaks the antique shop silence
The new Covid-19 strain is a political disaster of our own making
By seeking answers to scientific questions no-one had asked, we find ourselves assigning importance to discoveries which may have none
A Royal fogey reassessed
Understanding George and his reign is crucial to our post-progressivist consideration of the history of patriotism
Ralph Vaughan Williams: 5th symphony/Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Hyperion)
Symphonies to give you hope and vision