Books
Should family history, however painful, be memorialised forever?
What to hold on to and what to let go of is Samantha Ellis’s dilemma when trying to explain the complexities of their Judeo-Iraqi heritage to her young son
No escaping mother: Lili is Crying, bv Hélène Bessette, reviewed
A daughter longs to flee her parent’s boarding house in 1930s Provence, but her bid for independence fails in a story of thwarted love and shattered dreams
Vampires, werewolves and Sami sorcerers
Animism, divination and shape-shifting witchcraft continued to be powerful forces in the Baltic long after the conversion of Europe to Christianity
Misfits unite: The Emperor of Gladness, by Ocean Vuong, reviewed
Vuong’s disparate characters in rural Connecticut, including a Lithuanian octogenarian and her teenage Vietnamese carer, find fulfilment not in achievements but in loving companionship
Imperialism still overshadows our intellectual history
Some of Peter Watson’s musings on the empire might have been sacrificed for discussions of music and architecture – and the place of George Orwell in the British imagination
The past is another country: Ripeness, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
The voice of teenage Edith caring for her pregnant sister in Italy alternates with that of her elderly self in contemporary Ireland in a story of identity, belonging and consent
The titans who shaped Test cricket
Cricket histories are a dangerous genre both for writers and readers. They can be incredibly boring, the dullest of all…
Who started the Cold War?
It was America, with its decision to build a global liberal order – not the Soviet Union, with plans to spread communism in Europe, argues Vladislav Zubok
The fragility of the modern city reflects humanity’s vulnerability
The more complex the infrastructure, the more liable it is to break down – as was recently apparent in the blackout that brought Madrid and Lisbon to a standstill in April
A.C. Benson enters the pantheon of great English diarists
The intimate of writers, politicians and royalty, Benson confined his waspish anecdotes to journals kept over a period of 40 years, now available in a magnificent two-volume edition
Admirable in their awfulness – the siblings Gus and Gwen John
The self-styled Gypsy King and his reclusive sister seemed polar opposites – but both painters were selfish, obsessive monsters, according to Judith Mackrell
Edge of your seat
Great news for admirers of entertaining and refreshingly honest thinking and writing about our world: a bonus volume by the…
A searching question: Heartwood, by Amity Gaige, reviewed
Can the mysterious disappearance of a hiker on the Appalachian Trail be linked to a Department of Defense training facility in backwoods Maine?
Church teaching on homosexuality can be revised
Lamorna Ash devotes much space to interviewing gay Christians seared by homophobia, but neglects scripture’s underlying message about the link between sex and loving commitment
Nunc est bibendum – to Horace, the lusty rebel
Peter Stothard’s portrait of an ambitious young Lothario running wild and refusing to knuckle down is certainly not the Horace we know from Latin lessons
An ill wind: Poppyland, by D.J. Taylor, reviewed
Norfolk life looks quietly bleak in these carefully worked short stories of broken homes, precarious employment, dwindling expectations and torpor
With many despairing academics packing it in, who will solve the problem of the universities?
Something is seriously amiss when such a courageous and independent-minded professor as Matt Goodwin feels he no longer belongs in the system
No place is safe: The Brittle Age, by Donatella di Pietrantonio, reviewed
When her daughter, a student in Milan, is left traumatised after being mugged, Lucia is reminded of her own violent introduction to adulthood at a similar ‘brittle age’
Remembering Hiroshima 80 years on
Iain MacGregor’s impeccably researched account of the first use of nuclear weapons in war is a timely reminder of the horrors they unleash on the world
Everyone who was anyone in Russia was spied on – including Stalin
In 1972,Vasili Mitrokhin oversaw the transfer of thousands of documents in the KGB archives and secretly noted the atrocities they revealed - though Stalin’s file was mysteriously empty
What Mark Twain owed to Charles Dickens
It wasn’t just Dickens’s stage performances and publishing ventures that fascinated Twain, but the witty, journalistic style, which he mimicked to great effect in early travel books
Charles Darwin’s contribution to Patagonia’s grim history
Characterising native tribes as ‘naked, painted, shivering, hideous savages’ proved no less calamitous for their survival as Argentina’s efforts to exterminate them, says Matthew Carr
The all-seeing AI
Artificial intelligence has overturned many of the old rules, and the one about ‘seeing is believing’ was perhaps the first…
Repetitive strain: On the Calculation of Volume, Books I and II, by Solvej Balle, reviewed
In an astonishing multi-volume novel where the unthinkable becomes entirely credible, Tara Selter, an antiquarian bookseller, finds herself trapped in one remorselessly recurring November day
Douglas Cooper – a complex character with a passion for Cubism
Prone to paranoia and tantrums, the critic and collector made many enemies, but his firsthand knowledge of Léger, Picasso and Braque also won the admiration of art historians
