Ghosting

Andrew O’Hagan: Julian Assange, 6 March 2014

“... Guardian. He said it would come from journalists he’d worked with there. He was obsessed with David Leigh and Nick Davies, two of the main reporters. ‘Davies is extremely hostile to me,’ Assange said. ‘The Guardian basically double-crossed the organisation in the worst way.’ (The Guardian denies this.) ‘We left them with a cache of cables – to ...”

Buy birthday present, go to morgue

Colm Tóibín: Diane Arbus, 2 March 2017

Diane Arbus: Portrait of a Photographer 
by Arthur Lubow.
Cape, 734 pp., £35, October 2016, 978 0 224 09770 3
Show More
Silent Dialogues: Diane Arbus and Howard Nemerov 
by Alexander Nemerov.
Fraenkel Gallery, 106 pp., $30, March 2015, 978 1 881337 41 6
Show More
Show More
“... Dracula with Bela Lugosi. In their 1995 book Dark Carnival: The Secret World of Tod Browning, David Skal and Elias Savada recount the casting process for Freaks: In a Montreal sideshow, scouts discovered Johnny Eckhardt … a startling ‘half-boy’ whose body ended below the ribcage. The armless, legless Prince Randian was a native of British Guiana who ...”

Holocaust History

Geoff Eley, 3 March 1983

“... It is entirely symptomatic that she should devote disproportionate space to the work of David Irving, which has little credibility amongst scholars, and which was authoritatively disposed of in a major essay by Martin Broszat, one of many current historians whom Dawidowicz implicitly belittles.In all these ways the discussion of the literature is ...”

Boomerang

Sylvia Lawson, 18 February 1988

Australians: A Historical Library 
Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, AUS $695Show More
Show More
“... years. Very good entries on Law (Ross Cranston), Culture (Richard White) and on K.R. Murdoch (David Bowman) are exceptions to the general level. Even granting their own terms – those of closed and authoritative, rather than open and provisional history – the Dictionary and chronology could be much more imaginative; on a reprinting, they should be ...”

Child of Evangelism

James Wood, 3 October 1996

The Quest for God: A Personal Pilgrimage 
by Paul Johnson.
Weidenfeld, 216 pp., £14.99, March 1996, 0 297 81764 7
Show More
Is There a God? 
by Richard Swinburne.
Oxford, 144 pp., £20, February 1996, 0 19 823544 5
Show More
God in Us: A Case for Christian Humanism 
by Anthony Freeman.
SCM, 87 pp., £5.95, September 1993, 0 344 02538 1
Show More
Robert Runcie: The Reluctant Archbishop 
by Humphrey Carpenter.
Hodder, 401 pp., £20, October 1996, 0 340 57107 1
Show More
Show More
“... It was explained to me afterwards that these dancers were ‘taken with the Spirit’. One young woman was a persistent dancer, and I recall being disappointed that she was among the least attractive women in the congregation (at 13, this was important). The frondy dresses worn by Christian women in the late Seventies and the visionary intensity gave ...”

‘What a man this is, with his crowd of women around him!’

Hilary Mantel: Springtime for Robespierre, 30 March 2000

Robespierre 
edited by Colin Haydon and William Doyle.
Cambridge, 292 pp., £35, July 1999, 0 521 59116 3
Show More
Show More
“... ask these things, of course. The tone is judicious, though an outburst of ritual name-calling from David Jordan belies the subtlety of his longer study, The Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre. For him, Robespierre is ‘unworldly, resentful, vain, egotistical, susceptible to flattery, contemptuous of or indifferent to all the social pleasures ...”

Diary

Patricia Lockwood: When I Met the Pope, 30 November 2023

“... essays – during the period of composition the world does nothing but give you gifts.They love David Foster Wallace here, and I have read no one but him for months. His books are everywhere in tall voluble stacks – a writer is always everywhere when you are working on them. I feel partially disrobed when I see his name. At my sickest, I had begun asking ...”

An ’ell of an ’eadache

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite: The General Strike, 13 August 2026

The Future in Our Past: The General Strike, 1926-2026 
by Callum Cant and Matthew Lee.
Verso, 154 pp., £11.99, April, 978 1 83674 261 6
Show More
The Edge of Revolution: The General Strike that Shook Britain 
by David Torrance.
Bloomsbury, 320 pp., £20, March, 978 1 3994 2359 5
Show More
Nine Days in May: The General Strike of 1926 
by Jonathan Schneer.
Oxford, 416 pp., £25, March, 978 0 19 289453 3
Show More
Britain’s Revolutionary Summer: The General Strike of 1926 
by Edd Mustill.
Oneworld, 324 pp., £16.99, April, 978 1 83643 068 1
Show More
Show More
“... granted that the establishment wanted to dominate the working classes. Studies by two academics, David Torrance and Jonathan Schneer, are aimed at a popular audience. Torrance focuses on high politics and elites, on the dubious basis that politicians and the middle classes are ‘more inclined to record their experiences than striking railwaymen, printers ...”

The Tower

Andrew O’Hagan, 7 June 2018

“... Rania was always making cakes and bringing them in for the staff and she got to know the other young mothers. As well as befriending Naseem she was close to another mother from the tower, Munira, who lived on the fifth floor. It was a strong Muslim community: many were from the Middle East, but a sizeable number were from Morocco, and some of the local ...”

Permission to narrate

Edward Said, 16 February 1984

Israel in Lebanon: The Report of the International Commission 
by Sean MacBride.
Ithaca, 282 pp., £4.50, March 1984, 0 903729 96 2
Show More
Sabra et Chatila: Enquête sur un Massacre 
by Amnon Kapeliouk.
Seuil, 117 pp.
Show More
Final Conflict: The War in the Lebanon 
by John Bulloch.
Century, 238 pp., £9.95, April 1983, 0 7126 0171 6
Show More
Lebanon: The Fractured Country 
by David Gilmour.
Robertson, 209 pp., £9.95, June 1983, 0 85520 679 9
Show More
The Tragedy of Lebanon: Christian Warlords, Israeli Adventures and American Bunglers 
by Jonathan Randal.
Chatto, 320 pp., £9.50, October 1983, 0 7011 2755 4
Show More
God cried 
by Tony Clifton and Catherine Leroy.
Quartet, 141 pp., £15, June 1983, 0 7043 2375 3
Show More
Beirut: Frontline Story 
by Salim Nassib, Caroline Tisdall and Chris Steele-Perkins.
Pluto, 160 pp., £3.95, March 1983, 0 86104 397 9
Show More
The Fateful Triangle: Israel, the United States and the Palestinians 
by Noam Chomsky.
Pluto, 481 pp., £6.95, October 1983, 0 86104 741 9
Show More
Show More
“... the Occupied Territories was to challenge the collective Arab narrative and, in the words of a young Arab Third Secretary, to view history in too ‘liberal and Western’ a way. Thus no Palestinian narrative, no Profile, no census: Palestine yes, Palestinians no. The second anecdote is taken from the other side of the aisle, where, as we have seen, things ...”

Sick of the Subject

Leo Robson: Ralph Ellison’s Interventions, 22 October 2026

The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated 
by Ralph Ellison, edited by John F. Callahan.
Modern Library, 816 pp., $30, February 2024, 978 0 593 73006 5
Show More
The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison 
by Ralph Ellison, edited by John F. Callahan and Marc C. Conner.
Modern Library, 1072 pp., $30, March 2024, 978 0 593 73007 2
Show More
Show More
“... Burke in A Grammar of Motives, ‘the suffered is the learned.’Invisible Man is the story of a young African American who is convinced he will find the ‘something’ he is looking for if he submits to the demands or expectations of the powerful people he encounters, or colludes in their grand schemes. The recognition of his error, following what he calls ...”

Market Forces and Malpractice

James Meek: The Housing Crisis, 4 July 2024

“... One morning​ in Manchester, in November 2023, a young man went looking for a place to stay. He’d lost his job and couldn’t pay the rent on his flat. When he asked the council for advice, they told him to stay put. He did, until the bailiffs came and changed the locks. He slept rough in a train station. He was on drugs ...”

Writer’s Writer and Writer’s Writer’s Writer

Julian Barnes: ‘Madame Bovary’, 18 November 2010

Madame Bovary: Provincial Ways 
by Gustave Flaubert and Lydia Davis.
Penguin, 342 pp., £20, November 2010, 978 1 84614 104 1
Show More
Show More
“... Hopkins; and though Steegmuller did write some fiction – including mysteries under the name of David Keith – it’s a fair bet that Davis is the best fiction writer ever to translate the novel. Which suggests a further question to the opening list: would you rather have your great novel translated by a good writer or a less good one? This is not as idle ...”

In the Potato Patch

Jenny Turner: Penelope Fitzgerald, 19 December 2013

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life 
by Hermione Lee.
Chatto, 508 pp., £25, November 2013, 978 0 7011 8495 7
Show More
Show More
“... into the reading room.’ And it’s used defensively, to protect her privacy. ‘Have written to David Godwin pretending not to understand exactly and hope that will keep him at bay.’ After Offshore, Fitzgerald wrote six more novels, of which two more were nominated for the Booker. Since her death in 2000 it has become common to talk of her as one of the ...”

Itemised

Fredric Jameson, 8 November 2018

My Struggle: Book 6. The End 
by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken and Don Bartlett.
Harvill Secker, 1153 pp., £25, August 2018, 978 1 84655 829 0
Show More
Show More
“... form. Nor does it take the form of the boredom with self either – that great peerless theme of David Foster Wallace’s in his last book, The Pale King (2011).Q. Does anything happen in these books?A. Yes, but not where you think. Let’s first follow a certain consequence of itemisation to its conclusion. There are feelings and emotions in these volumes ...”