After his epic wodge of intricate Victoriana, ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’, this pared-down fable – part of the ‘Myths’ series commissioned from a roster of...
Anita Mason’s Latin American fixation has shaped the trajectory of her recent writings: ‘The Racket’ explored the shadowed landscape of Brazil in the ’80s, while ‘The...
Begun in the immediate aftermath of the Columbine shootings in Littleton, Colorado, Wally Lamb’s new novel follows Columbine teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, the school’s nurse,...
Mark E Smith, the uncompromising and often belligerent leader of the late John Peel’s favourite group, The Fall, is not an easy man to write about. Since 1976, his opaque lyrics and caustic,...
Pity the head that wears the Laureateship. The current incumbent of that most curious office, paid in wine and brickbats, has described how ‘the job has been very, very damaging to my...
Deyan Sudjic is the director of the Design Museum and this is his dense introduction to the world of objects: a potted history of design and an exploration of the way that it influences our...
2008: Catherine sits on the steps outside her cousin’s house in Edinburgh thinking back to the summer of 1981, when her cousins, Rosa and Sam, and their widowed mother came to stay with...
The Tudors are all the rage at the moment. Not only have we been treated to ten weeks of Jonathan Rhys Meyers prancing and pouting as Henry VIII in the lavish BBC series, but now the ubiquitous...
In the opening pages of ‘The First Person’, Ali Smith’s latest collection of tales, the narrator overhears a debate on the nature of short stories. The discussion eventually...
When Tove Jansson started producing ‘Moomin’ cartoon strips in the mid-1950s, she did so with the readers of the London Evening News in mind. Although she had been writing prose about...
