fri 05/09/2025

book reviews and features

Yuval Noah Harari: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century review - a sceptic's optimism?

Marina Vaizey

The bestseller Sapiens (2011, first published in English in 2014) by the hitherto little-known Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari has sold enormously well, and justly so: recommended by...

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P.E.Caquet: The Bell of Treason review - the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia

Jasper Rees

It was 80 years ago next month that Neville Chamberlain returned with the good news of peace in our time...

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h 100 Awards: Publishing and Writing - other stories, other voices

Boyd Tonkin

If history repeats itself, better hope that it corrects its mistakes as well. This year’s nominations for the...

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Roger Scruton: Music as an Art review - how to listen?

Marina Vaizey

Hegel, Kant, David Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Leibniz are all adduced, referred to, and paraphrased, and that’s just for starters. Add Rameau, Schubert, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten and the...

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Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flow

Katherine Waters

“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The...

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Rachel Heng: Suicide Club review - skin-deep dystopia

Katherine Waters

When Lea is nervous she picks at the skin near the nail of her thumb. When she draws blood the wound repairs instantly because she is a member of the Second Wave endowed with SmartBlood™ and...

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Stella Tillyard: The Great Level review – reason and passion in the Fens and Virginia

Boyd Tonkin

The Fens of East Anglia, and the lonely coasts that skirt them, usually sit well below the horizon of mainstream culture. Yet when England’s flatlands and their maritime margins do find a literary...

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Guy Stagg, The Crossway review – a gripping pilgrimage through faith and doubt

Boyd Tonkin

On new year’s day in 2013, Guy Stagg set out to walk alone from Canterbury to Jerusalem. He planned this journey, which would take ten months, cross 11 countries and cover 5500km, in the wake of...

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Georges Simenon: The Krull House review – timely revival for a noir masterwork

Boyd Tonkin

Georges Simenon began to write his Inspector Maigret mysteries in the early 1930s. Not long after after, the famously productive Belgian-born novelist – who could polish off a Maigret inside a...

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Listed: 10 classic tales of the city

Boyd Tonkin

Now is the time of year when weary travellers find themselves in some sun-strafed piazza, gazing in bemusement at a world-renowned monument and wondering why on earth they came. Hectored by...

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