Weird Things in the Sky

Edmund Gordon: Are we alone?, 26 December 2024

After the Flying Saucers Came: A Global History of the UFO Phenomenon 
by Greg Eghigian.
Oxford, 388 pp., £22.99, September 2024, 978 0 19 086987 8
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“... and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – played a role in connecting the happenings to little green men. There were also influential works of non-fiction, such as a widely read article in Life, ‘Have We Visitors from Space?’, which appeared in April 1952. That summer, the number of reported sightings ‘skyrocketed’. It wasn’t long before people ...”

We were doing well when I left

Tom Stevenson: America’s Afghanistan Delusion, 21 May 2026

Choosing Defeat: The Twenty-Year Saga of How America Lost Afghanistan 
by Paul D. Miller.
Cambridge, 545 pp., £35, October 2025, 978 1 009 61437 5
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“... as an extravagance they could no longer afford. As early as 2009, the political scientist Robert Jervis argued that the presence of the international coalition was a problem in itself. The Taliban had roots in Afghan society: it was never going to be excluded from the country’s future. ‘Withdrawal without winning’ was the probable result. Jervis ...”

Partnership of Loss

Roy Foster: Ireland since 1789, 13 December 2007

Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006 
by Paul Bew.
Oxford, 613 pp., £35, August 2007, 978 0 19 820555 5
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“... their muddy hobnailed boots go splashing into a wet and peaty meadow bordered with rich, green, swaying trees, cut by a savage wind, needled with driving rain, grey cloud looming over. Cheerfully, quickly, methodically, they roll the banners, for they are expensive banners . . . bought with the weekly threepences and sixpences of working men. Four ...”

Capture the Flag

Rory Scothorne: Labour in Scotland, 4 June 2026

A History of the Scottish Labour Party 
by David Torrance.
Edinburgh, 314 pp., £24.99, January, 978 1 3995 4480 1
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“... Harris’s old Glasgow constituency is now represented in Edinburgh by Holly Bruce of the Scottish Green Party, which beat Labour into third place in both of Scotland’s main cities. ‘By the early 21st century,’ David Torrance writes in A History of the Scottish Labour Party, the party ‘appeared to have lost an empire but not yet found a role. The ...”

I smell mink coats

Paul Keegan: Philip Guston goes rogue, 25 January 2024

Philip Guston 
Tate Modern, until 25 February 2024Show More
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“... The hoods inhabit identical rooms with bare floorboards, naked lightbulb, an empty picture frame, green rug, fringed lampshade, windows which look out at the marching façades of Midtown high-rises, which look in turn like a memory of the desert mesas of George Herriman’s Krazy Kat comic strip, another early influence. Like Herriman’s trio of ...”

Iraq, 2 May 2005

Andrew O’Hagan: Two Soldiers, 6 March 2008

“... of the next hour or so they met other patrol groups from the company. ‘We then did a U-turn on Green 9 and Green 12’ – these were combat zones – ‘and turned into an area known to us as “India”,’ says Lance Sergeant Stephen Phipps. ‘We then made our way through the al-Mukatil al-Araby district. I’m not ...”

The Road to Reading Gaol

Colm Tóibín, 30 November 2017

“... to revise and correct the pages. When he was released, Wilde gave the manuscript to his friend Robert Ross, who had two copies made. He sent one to Lord Alfred Douglas; the other he later lodged in the British Museum. Sections from Ross’s copy were published in 1905 and in 1908. The complete version, based on the original manuscript, wasn’t published ...”

Loafing with the Sissies

Colm Tóibín: The Trials of Andy Warhol, 10 September 2020

Warhol: A Life as Art 
by Blake Gopnik.
Allen Lane, 931 pp., £35, March, 978 0 241 00338 1
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“... him the first issue of the Black Mountain Review and introduced him to the work of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, Cy Twombly and Ray Johnson.Opinion is divided about his appearance. ‘He thought of himself as ugly,’ a boyfriend from the early 1960s said. ‘But when you saw Andy naked, he looked ...”

His Spittin’ Image

Colm Tóibín: John Stanislaus Joyce, 22 February 2018

“... grey with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word.’ Having said some words in Latin, wearing ‘the subtle smile of death’s madness’, she will ...”

Jungle Joys

Alfred Appel Jr: Wa-Wa-Wa with the Duke, 5 September 2002

“... Jump for joy!(‘Lille’ is lace; ‘Eve’ is the character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin.) ‘Oh, Green Pastures was just a Technicolor movie,’ Jeffries sings, dismissing the 1936 film version of Connelly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, historically important as the most respected racially condescending production of its time and a standard inclusion in ...”

Let them eat oysters

Lorna Finlayson: Animal Ethics, 5 October 2023

Animal Liberation Now 
by Peter Singer.
Penguin, 368 pp., £20, June, 978 1 84792 776 7
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Justice for Animals 
by Martha Nussbaum.
Simon & Schuster, 372 pp., £16, January, 978 1 9821 0250 0
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“... have seen a succession of David Attenborough hits: Blue Planet II, Dynasties and Dynasties II, The Green Planet and Frozen Planet II on the BBC; and on Netflix, Our Planet, A Life on Our Planet and Planet Earth II. Attenborough’s most recent series, Wild Isles, was watched by more than ten million people in the first month of its release. Blue Planet III and ...”

The Person in the Phone Booth

David Trotter: Phone Booths, 28 January 2010

“... restlessly up and down. In Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1982), fantasist Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), on a first date with barmaid Rita (Diahnne Abbott), hopes to impress her by leafing through his autograph album. It’s not long before our attention drifts away from his dismal performance to the restaurant behind him, where two illuminated ...”

How many speed bumps?

Gavin Francis: Pain, 21 August 2014

The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers 
by Joanna Bourke.
Oxford, 396 pp., £20, June 2014, 978 0 19 968942 2
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“... the eyes the greater the capacity to withstand pain: ‘As the colour went through blue-grey, green, hazel, light brown and dark brown so the reaction to pain increased on the average.’ Similar prejudices permeated discussions of how much pain was felt by women as compared to men. Francis Galton argued that European women may seem more sensitive than ...”

Lace the air with LSD

Mike Jay: Brain Warfare, 4 February 2021

Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control 
by Stephen Kinzer.
Henry Holt, 384 pp., £11.99, November 2020, 978 1 250 76262 7
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“... LSD to twenty inmates of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary nearly every day for 15 months. Robert Hyde at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital paid hundreds of students from Emerson, Harvard and MIT $15 each to drink a vial of liquid that might induce an ‘altered state’; in the aftermath, one of the subjects hanged herself in a clinic bathroom. As well ...”

Is this successful management?

R.W. Johnson, 20 April 1989

One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher 
by Hugo Young.
Macmillan, 570 pp., £16.95, April 1989, 0 333 34439 1
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“... between enraged Jewish erstwhile supporters and the traditional Tory worthies on the 19th green can hardly have been easy, and it’s not certain that Denis would have been altogether an asset. All we know for certain is that a new Tory agent was hired in 1962 with the mission of rebuilding the constituency party organisation almost from scratch and ...”