‘The Booker can drive people mad’
When Alan Hollinghurst's celebrated The Stranger's Child was omitted from the literary prize's shortlist, many questioned the award's credibility. Twelve months on, Britain's great stylist breaks his silence on the issue – and on what turns young peo...
Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale
Kate Summerscale's follow-up to The Suspicions of Mr Whicher is another masterful retelling of a true Victorian scandalWhen I was at university in the late 80s, the influence of The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's milestone femi...
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Simon Mawer
Simon Mawer's follow-up to his Booker-shortlisted The Glass Room is the thrilling tale of a beautiful spy parachuted into occupied FranceSimon Mawer used to be what is known in publishing as a "mid-list author": well-regarded and well-reviewed but not,...
Michael Frayn: ‘I’m never going to write anything again…’
…but that's what the veteran playwright and novelist always says. And his latest novel, a laugh-out-loud farce set on a Greek island, gives no hint of being his last wordReviewers will often say a book made them laugh out loud, when what they mean
Baroness of swing
The moment she first heard Thelonious Monk play the piano, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter walked out on her own life, including five children, and devoted herself to the American jazz genius. The Rothschild family disowned her, but now her great n...
When David Lost His Voice by Judith Vanistendael
A superb graphic account of a family coping with cancer is moving without being mawkishWhen I read the words "a moving story about cancer, and its effect on one ordinary family", my instinct, whether staring at a movie poster or the jacket of a paperba...
The Penge mystery
In 1877, Harriet Staunton's husband and three others were accused of starving her to death and lurid newspaper reports of the Penge murder trial held the nation's rapt attention. A bestselling novel about the affair – written in 1934 and now rep...
The House That Groaned by Karrie Fransman – review
The oddball tenants of a shared London house jump off the page in Karrie Fransman's bleak yet beautiful graphic novelAccording to her publisher, Karrie Fransman lives in London, in a house "not dissimilar" from the one she depicts in The House That Gro...
Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot
Scenes from the author's own life add poignancy to this account of James Joyce's troubled daughterThe story of James Joyce's daughter, Lucia, who longed to be a dancer, but spent the last 30 years of her life in a Northampton mental institution, has al...
Rereading: Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford
According to her sister Jessica, Nancy Mitford spent months 'giggling helplessly by the drawing-room fire' as she wrote her early novel. It is the perfect seasonal treatIt would be more than slightly batty of me to claim Nancy Mitford's early book...
Outsider by Brian Sewell
Outspoken art critic Brian Sewell opens up about his ramshackle childhood, his time at Christie's and his late-50s sex spree, but the action is tantalisingly cut short in 1967When I interviewed Brian Sewell, Britain's most famous and famously tetchy ar...
Nelson, edited by Rob Davis and Woodrow Phoenix
A collaboration between 54 British comic artists has produced a surprisingly cohesive and heartfelt novelThis is a wonderful idea: Rob Davis, the artist and writer whose excellent graphic novel adaptation of Don Quixote came out earlier this year, and ...
