The Book of Air
I was about to write my promised piece on Anna Karenina, when my editor suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea to mention
Language and the Presidency
I ended my last piece with a promise not to waste any more words on the self-publicist and arch-troll Milo Yiannopoulos. I break that
The unsolved mystery of Elena Ferrante
Elena Ferrante is an Italian novelist in her 70s who has been producing published work for about 25 years. But it was only four years
The new plot against America
In his novel The Plot Against America, Philip Roth imagines two years of alternative history for the United States.
The flawed brilliance of Bob Dylan
Ever since he appeared on the New York folk scene, presenting himself as an anonymous exile from a place of no distinct identity – “My name it means nothing, my age it means less, the country I come from it's called the Midwest” – Bob Dylan has worked to elude definition.
The Other Handmaid's Tale
I happened to be living in California when the twin towers were destroyed and, although a long way from New York, I observed
When your word is someone else's bond
Within minutes of Melania Trump finishing her speech at the US Republican Convention, the news was out that she had plagiarised a
Drone strikes and authorial intentions
I saw Eye in the Sky the afternoon it opened in London. I went with few preconceptions, knowing only that it was about drones and
January 23, 2016
Recycling Shakespeare
Hogarth Press has commissioned a series of 'retellings' of Shakespeare plays. First to appear is Jeanette Winterson's take on The Winter's Tale.
December 5, 2015
Undergraduate poem comes to light
In 1811, Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet promoting atheism. This wasn't his first offence.
November 7, 2015
Strange motivations
I'm grateful to the novelist James Meek for introducing me to a new critical term. Reviewing Jonathan Franzen'sPurity (“From Wooden to Plastic”, LRB, 24/09/15), Meek writes that the first appearance of Leila Helou“is couched in the leaden terms of the Unaccountably
August 1, 2015
Truth-telling and the right to publish
The career of the British concert pianist James Rhodes has been anything but conventional. He was more or less self-taught until he was 13.
June 20, 2015
Hard times revisited
For three impressive London women born in Bangladesh there were cheering results in the UK election.
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