Uncharitable Thoughts
A relentlessly hostile critic of Israel, Oxfam are destroying the second-hand book trade in the UK
Politics, Ideas and the Arts
Gore the Bore
I once met Gore Vidal at a dinner party. He was less an intellectual heavyweight and more a drunken and repetitive bore
Elizabethan Enigma
Edmund Spenser: A Life by Andrew Hadfield is vivid in parts, but ultimately fails to paint a clear picture of the 16th century poet
Pandora’s Books
Belinda Jack's The Woman Reader charts the fascinating history of female literacy from Sappho to illegal book clubs in modern-day Iran
Kilburn Confidential
After a seven-year hiatus, Zadie Smith returns with her fourth novel, NW. It is in turn vivid, angry and surprising
Trapped By His Style
Martin Amis is a true writer but Lionel Asbo is yet another example of his failure to break into a new vein
A Man for our Season
Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies is a dazzling exercise in literary ventriloquism, but it panders too much to modern sensibilities, painting Thomas Cromwell as a secular saint
Victorian Bibliophiles
Dickens and Eliot may have longed for the 19th century equivalent of a Kindle, but they also knew when to judge a book by its cover
Latvia’s Lost World
Jean-Paul Kaufmann's A Journey to Nowhere recounts how a student love affair led him to discover Courland, the Latvian peninsula with a troubled history and elusive identity
“Weary of Silence, Soon Sickened by Words”
Delving into the various linguistic predicaments of Samuel Beckett reveals the beautiful complications of his writings.
Capitalising on Human Capital
Book review of Capital by John Lanchester
Wise Beyond Her Years
Book review of The Innocents by Francesca Segal