Books Cold Warriors by Duncan White, review: The Cold War, era of the weapons-grade novelThe Telegraph - By Jake KerridgeA literary quiz: which author and poet wrote the inspirational line, “writers are the engineers of human souls”? The answer is Joseph Stalin, which is probably why it doesn’t crop up among the quotes the
Books William Boyd on the four great, forgotten authors of the Second World WarThe Telegraph - By William BoydLooking at the literature of the two world wars – from a British perspective – there is an interesting division. The First World War produced poetry of the highest rank – Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Graves,
Books The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy, review: 'a mesmerising fever dream'The Telegraph - By Claire AllfreeAlmost exactly halfway through Deborah Levy’s startling eighth novel, a 56-year-old man called Saul Adler, while walking across the pedestrian crossing on Abbey Road, is knocked down by a car driven by
Tumblr More than porn and fanfic: how young women made Tumblr the most fun place on the internetThe Telegraph - By Amy JonesThe news that Tumblr, a $1.1 million company in 2013, was being sold for a mere £3 million this week was divisive. The main reaction, for instance, was “What, Tumblr’s still going?” And yet, for its millions
Books Forgotten treasures or ‘uber-dregs’: is there ever such a thing as a lost literary masterpiece?The Telegraph - By Duncan WhiteHave you read the latest Marcel Proust? Not a question you expect to be asked in 2019. This autumn, a collection of his hitherto “lost” stories will be published in France. The stories were apparently
Books Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence by James Lovelock, review: ‘rambling optimism’The Telegraph - By Roger LewisWhat we require from scientists are hard facts, like: “The thin air of Mars is 99 per cent carbon dioxide and utterly unbreathable.” When they start getting mystical, it’s high time to put them out to
Books The Borgias: Power and Fortune by Paul Strathern, review: sex, violence and clichéd writingThe Telegraph - By Ian ThomsonThe Renaissance began in 1492, they say, when Christopher Columbus encountered America and Lucrezia Borgia’s father, Rodrigo, was made Pope Alexander VI. During the 11-year Borgia papacy, until 1503, was
Books Inland by Téa Obreht review: 33 camels walk into a Texas wharf...The Telegraph - By Sophie RatcliffeLate one April afternoon in 1856, 33 imported camels walked down the gangplank at Powder Point in Indianola, Texas. They’d been a while in coming. The notion of a “camel convoy” was mooted some 20 years
Anna Delvey Lies, lavish dinners and Lena Dunham: how Anna Delvey scammed the New York elite – and her own ‘best friend’The Telegraph - By Eleanor HallsOne Monday in April this year, Anna Delvey (born Anna Sorokin), the socialite and con artist who, since 2018, has made headlines across the world for brazenly swindling the who’s who of New York out of
Books The perils of being an ‘old coot’ in a world of TinderThe Telegraph - By Lynn BarberLynn Barber reviews Is There Still Sex in the City? by Candace Bushnell Sex and the City, based on a column Candace Bushnell wrote for the New York Observer, was a huge success on television from l998
Books How Simone de Beauvoir’s life was reduced to an erotic plotThe Telegraph - By Kate KirkpatrickIf even the queen of feminism was eclipsed by a man, what hope is there for the rest of us, asks Kate Kirkpatrick In The Second Sex (1949), Simone de Beauvoir claimed that women were harmed by growing
Books An audience with Quentin Blake – and some never-before-seen drawingsThe Telegraph - By Tristram Fane SaundersWhere Quentin Blake’s pen leads, he follows. Now 86, he tells Tristram Fane Saunders what’s next – and shows The Telegraph some exclusive new drawings Some artists give part of themselves to their creations.
Books Trinity by Frank Close review: a biography of a spy that reads like a le Carré novelThe Telegraph - By Roger LewisThe chief lesson of Trinity, Frank Close’s superlative biography of Klaus Fuchs, “the most dangerous spy in the history of nations,” is that John le Carré never needed to invent a single thing. It’s all
Salman Rushdie Quichotte by Salman Rushdie review: this magical satire is preaching to the convertedThe Telegraph - By Vidyan RavinthiranIt’s commonplace to say that satire is out of date. Overtaken by our bonkers politics, it has been made irrelevant by larger-than-life buffoons who, having arrived at the centres of power, engineer an
Books How the greatest spy of the Cold War inspired Graham Greene and John LeCarreThe Telegraph - By Duncan WhiteKim Philby inspired the Cold War’s two greatest thriller writers – then he drove them apart, says Duncan White In early 1968 Graham Greene and John le Carré came into very public dispute. It was an unexpected
Books Glass eyes, medieval combs and human skulls – how mudlarking helped me cope with lifeThe Telegraph - By Christian HouseScouring the shores of the Thames, Lara Maiklem uncovers pieces of the city’s forgotten past ‘All you need are wellies, a bag for finds and sunscreen. I’ll bring the latex gloves.’ Lara Maiklem’s email,
Jane Austen Sanditon: The Jane Austen masterpiece that never wasThe Telegraph - By Rupert ChristiansenA TV version of the unfinished ‘Sanditon’ will give viewers a taste of what could have been a classic novel. By Rupert Christiansen It’s one of the most tantalising might-have-beens of literary history
Books What connects peaches, cucumbers, goldfish and cows? Answer: none are native to BritainThe Telegraph - By Steven PooleSteven Poole reviews Invasive Aliens by Dan Eatherley (William Collins) The question of which organisms really “belong” in which parts of the world is most politically heated in the case of human beings.
Books Steam baths and sushki: How to spot the real RussiaThe Telegraph - By Julian EvansSara Wheeler's Mud and Stars is a grand tour inspired by great literature that captures the oddities of the world’s largest country, says Julian Evans Sara Wheeler is – as I am – a believer in the special
Books Sabotage and intelligence: meet the women who made D-Day happenThe Telegraph - By Clare MulleyClare Mulley enjoys a study of the unsung women behind enemy lines who helped with the invasion on June 6 1944 D-Day was mostly a male business. About 156,000 Allied troops landed in Normandy on the first
Toni Morrison Toni Morrison interview: on racism, her new novel and Marlon BrandoThe Telegraph - By Gaby WoodToni Morrison died on August 5. This interview was originally published in 2015 Toni Morrison is, without a doubt, a world-class novelist. Her work as an editor, however, has received much less attention.
Sex and the City The dark side of Sex and the City: why Candace Bushnell's book was no New York fairy taleThe Telegraph - By Alice VincentBeneath the Cosmos and canapés, Sex and the City dealt with far more disturbing issues. Alice Vincent examines how Candace Bushnell’s subversive depiction of New York was forgotten Candace Bushnell has
Propaganda This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev, review: 'like an essay on icebergs written from the tilting deck of the Titanic'The Telegraph - By Tim Smith-LaingTim Smith-Laing reviews This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev (Faber) We live in an era of astonishing “information abundance”. Those of us who spend large chunks of our lives online have, at any
Books Legacy: Gangsters, Corruption and the London Olympics by Michael Gillard, review: 'a brave investigation'The Telegraph - By James WaltonJames Walton reviews Legacy: Gangsters, Corruption and the London Olympics by Michael Gillard (Bloomsbury) When it comes to wildly misjudged libel cases, David Hunt vs Times Newspapers Ltd (2013) may be
Books Hark by Sam Lipsyte review: a sharp Flaubertian satire for the hipster eraThe Telegraph - By Vidyan RavinthiranThat is the role of the comic satirist in a world that seems – a remark often made about Donald Trump – to satirise itself? How can one salvage a scrap of earnest reality from the postmodern melange of
Books The savage stories behind our best picture booksThe Telegraph - By Lucy Scholes"Even now,” wrote J G Ballard, when he was in his 60s, “simply thinking about Long John Silver or the waves on Crusoe’s island stirs me far more than reading the original text. I suspect that these childhood
Books Howzat! When cricket united India with the 1911 All-India teamThe Telegraph - By Theo BarclayCricketing pilgrims travel to Hambledon, a little village in the hills of Hampshire. Next to an old pub called the Bat and Ball is Broadhalfpenny Down, a small ground fringed with trees, known as the of
James Patterson James Patterson interview: 'I could write literary fiction at a decent level – but no'The Telegraph - By Jake KerridgeIf literature were a sport, James Patterson would be a Donald Bradman or Usain Bolt figure, so far ahead of his rivals that it’s hardly worth their bothering to turn up. Although many critics would maintain
Dr. Seuss Why Dr Seuss's poem Green Eggs and Ham is a literary masterpieceThe Telegraph - By Clare PollardGreen Eggs and Ham (1960) is perhaps, thinking about the profound pleasure I take from reading it aloud, one of my top 10 poems ever. And yet I don’t recall reading a Dr Seuss book as a child. My love
