Books & Poetry

The publication of a new picture book from Anthony Browne is always a welcome event. His use of visual puns in almost photographic watercolours means that each illustration merits close scrutiny....

Ismail Kadare’s ‘The Siege’ is a satire on life in Hoxha’s Stalinist Albania with show trials and pseudoscience getting in the way of what the state, in the shape of the...

Grand pasticheur Sebastian Faulks rather soft-pedals his mimicry of Ian Fleming in his first Bond, which picks up where Fleming left off (‘The Man With the Golden Gun’ in 1966) and...

You’ve read the extracts, grimaced at the blanket Radio 4 coverage and now, do you really want to read the book? Yes, if you like tittle-tattle revelations about Tony’s ‘strong...

When you can still vividly remember a book from your childhood, you know it’s one worth passing on to your children. First published 30 years ago, John Burningham’s book  is a...

Fernandez Britten is a ‘private researcher’ who has been dubbed ‘the heartbreaker’ for exposing the infidelities of his clients’ spouses. Discontent and deeply...

‘Photographs cannot tell stories,’ writes Gourevitch about the infamous images of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib. ‘They can only provide evidence of stories, and evidence is mute;...

‘The Unblemished’ is far more clearly a genre novel than its predecessor ‘London Revenant’, something that works considerably to its advantage. Here, Williams is stuffing...

Screenwriter Tom Stone is madly in love with his wife, Ann. Approaching 40, they are expecting their first child. But their happiness and wellbeing prove all too brittle in the face of Tom’s...

At the start of this, the fifth Inspector Chen mystery, Chen is taking time out to study literature. Then a beautiful woman in a ripped mandarin dress is found, murdered, in a public place. A...