D D Guttenplan: Smiley Redux - Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway. In May 1966, an aggrieved John le Carré wrote to the editor of the Soviet newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta in response to …

In the Current Issue: Ritchie Robertson on W G Sebald * Francis Beckett on miners * Theo Zenou on the Pope * John Adamson on the Civil War * Norma Clarke on pink * Nicholas Rankin on …

David Nicholls is celebrated as the outstanding exponent of the variant of literary romcom known as ‘rom-trag’. Fifteen years after its publication, his masterpiece, One Day, newly adapted as a …

Book Reviews by Stephen Smith From the December 2024 Issue Lines of Insight Mondrian: His Life, His Art, His Quest for the Absolute By Nicholas Fox Weber

2024年12月1日 · Whither the literary salon? Once there was the Viennese coffeehouse, Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots; now we have Starbucks and Twitter. The setting of Mark …

The late American president Ronald Reagan told a press conference in 1986: ‘The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”’ …

Anne Perkins: Driven to Distraction - Precipice by Robert Harris. One of the most anguished documents in Violet Asquith’s papers at the Bodleian Library is a note on a small card in the …

3 天之前 · Norman Lewis (1908–2003) was arguably the finest English travel writer of his generation. Other contenders for the title – Robert Byron, Peter Fleming, Graham Greene, …

In 1789, as the revolution tore French society apart, a unique book was published in Britain. It consisted mainly of letters written by a Hampshire parson to a pair of well-known naturalists. …

T he premise of the fifth book in the Frank Bascombe series will not surprise devotees, since it is shared by all its predecessors: a man travels to a certain event (which proves to be …