Fiction
Libyans, Parisians and London Irish
Dry-ish, spare, clear-eyed — rare in a world of literary bloat, sentiment and overstatement
An actor’s story is a late career marvel
Cleverness is a virtue in itself but is never sterile or without purpose
Foul play
David Peace’s new novel is about much more than football
Iain Banks: a double life
His disturbing debut, The Wasp Factory, is being reissued this year
Rosemary Sutcliff
A writer of genius, capable of conveying the feelings and lives of those who lived in the distant past
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
Murders for April
April is the cruellest month, breeding detective fiction out of the dry land
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
Murders for the New Year
From Oxford to Italy, the murders continue in 2024
Keir’s comms catastrophe
Labour’s goal is clear but its messaging is anything but
Nothing to declare
Labour have done nothing wrong, but they’re going to stop it
BoJo’s Life of Johnson
Exclusive extracts of perhaps the best autobiography by a former Conservative prime minister called Boris
Afrocentrism with a Labour twist
Dawn Butler’s Black History Month video was disturbing as well as weird
The right-on, left-wing oppressors
A flaw in the design of academic studies makes the Left appear less authoritarian than the Right
The curious incuriosity of multiculturalists
We cannot blind ourselves to differences between people
Too many silences in this book about music
The hazy treatment of what “music” even entails falls flat
The attractions of extremes
Are we going to become ever more passive consumers of other people’s thoughts and memories?
On the King’s Road to ruin
The decline of commerce on Chelsea’s celebrated street is a worrying sign for London
The expensive problem with the minimum wage
Higher wages for some, perhaps, but joblessness for others
The personal has become far too political
Something has gone very wrong when we are acutely aware of politics
