I have started reading Donald Sassoon’s monumental The Culture of the Europeans (1,400 pages not counting notes, I may be…
To live is to act
John Banville writes about the deception of surfaces, about the fragility of knowledge. His characters are, invariably, people who pretend,…
The Directed Gaze
The other night I went to see the National Theatre production of Timon of Athens. But I did not go…
You
There is a very curious passage at the start of William Boyd’s latest novel, Waiting for Sunrise. We are introduced…
Tuck
The latest TLS has a fascinating review by Diarmaid MacCulloch (of The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval…
Barry Unsworth
Sometimes it is pure chance that makes you pick up a book. I have no idea, now, what made me…
Lost in Translation
I am a native of Gelderland. Our property consists only of a few acres of briar and brackish water. Pines…
When reviewers get it wrong
A few years ago, Peter Carey produced a novel called Theft: A Love Story. It is the story of two…
Histories
By coincidence, I’ve recently read new books from two of the best historical novelists writing in America today. Actually, that’s…