- Glasgow among 'best sports hosts'
- Empty-property Bill 'will not work'
- Special £10 note celebrates Jubilee
- Returning Fraser rings 'a mistake'
- New exams 'will be ready on time'
- Firms 'complacent' over grid energy
- Cash offered for turbine conversion
- Fire at derelict school deliberate
- Lunchtime sunshine brings 25C heat
- Firm fails to appear at committee
Reviews
Book review: Ramshackle, by Elizabeth Reeder
LITERARY chins have, for a while now, wagged about Chicago-born Elizabeth Reeder, a teacher on the much-admired University of Glasgow Creative Writing Programme, and now based in Scotland.
Book review: The Deadman’s Pedal, by Alan Warner
IT LOOKS, at the outset of his seventh novel, as if Alan Warner is going to follow Donna Tartt, Alan Hollinghurst, Naomi Alderman and countless others down that well-trodden path back to Brideshead: callow, curious boy is transformed by exposure to exhilaratingly depraved toffs.
Book review: Why Spencer Perceval Had To Die, by Andro Linklater
SPENCER Perceval, although he is hardly a household name, occupies a unique and unfortunate position in British history: he is the only Prime Minister to have been assassinated. If that piece of trivia is pub-quiz obscure, then the name of his murderer (John Bellingham) is certainly worth more than a bonus point.
Book review: Dark Dawn, by Matt McGuire
THERE’S no messing with Matt McGuire and the blunt, hard-nosed opener to his debut crime novel: “It was January. It was raining. The kid was dead.”
Book review: Opposed Positions by Gwendoline Riley
THE references to literary greats may be flattering but Gwendoline Riley’s distinctive style puts her beyond compare, says Stuart Kelly
Book review: Curiosity by Philip Ball
WHAT do we mean by curiosity? What do we mean by the terms scientific thinking or scientific method? How have these things changed over the centuries, and what should we even be curious about? Is anything off limits?
Book review: Remembering Che by Aleida March
THE heroes of Cuba’s Rebel Army had their needs too. In this memoir, Aleida March, widow of Che Guevara, recounts her relationship with the revolutionary icons.
Book review: Reality, Reality by Jackie Kay
WHAT’S most pleasing in this story collection by one of Scotland’s most celebrated writers is the quality of exuberance.
Interview: Hilary Mantel, author of Bring Up The Bodies
Man Booker winner Hilary Mantel tells David Robinson the secret of twisting long-dead characters into her readers’ minds
Books in brief: Anglo-Saxon Art | The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After | Photography
Michael Kerrigan offers his view on recent books
Book review: If You’re Reading This, I’m Already Dead
Andrew Nicoll enchants with the story of a circus acrobat who impersonates a monarch
Interview: Sara Sheridan, author of Brighton Belle
Sara Sheridan tells Susan Mansfield about her new ‘cosy noir’ sleuth and why, for a historical novelist, the 1950s is a gift that keeps on giving
Book review: Sweet Revenge
GERTRUDE Stein said that the problem of her hometown, Oakland, was that “there is no there there”. I’ve always felt the same applies to Simon Cowell.
Book review: Target London
SHORTLY before dawn on 13 June 13, 1944, the crew of a Royal Navy motorboat patrolling the English Channel saw “a bright horizontal moving flame” in the sky above the coast of France.
Book review: The Panopticon
Stuart Kelly hails a novel that gets inside the soul of its troubled heroine
Bookworm: “You mean, I should just cross out Harry Potter and put Sidney Chambers?”
Snippets from the literary world...
Book review: Breakout Nations: In Pursuit Of The Next Economic Miracles, Ruchir Sharma
FUND managers like to portray themselves as big game hunters, eyeing the horizon in search of rare beasts. Since 2008, the beast that everyone has hunting is an emerging market which could deliver a decent economic return while the developed economies of the world bump along with low interest rates and negative growth.
1 commentBookworm: ‘With a few grand exceptions...there are very few theatrical versions of the journalist’
Snippets from the past seven days in the literary world
Book review: Bring me the head of Ryan Giggs
AS THE Old Trafford faithful have had cause to point out every season since 1991, there’s only one Ryan Joseph Giggs, OBE.
Book review: The Secret Life of William Shakespeare
WE know precious little about William Shakespeare the man as opposed to the playwright and poet. Baptisms not births were recorded in the 16th century so we don’t even know his exact birthday.
Book review: Beastly Things
ITALY may be sinking into the financial mire but Venice is still milking the tourists, and corpses continue to float in its canals.
Book review: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
Simon Mawer’s tense tale of one woman’s war places him among the best writers of the genre
Book review: Marilyn
What is it about Marilyn Monroe? She wasn’t the most beautiful star ever to shine in Hollywood, nor the most outrageously curvaceous. Yet we cannot stop looking at her – from every conceivable angle.
Book review: Pure
I HAD forgotten, if temporarily, just how gifted is Timothy Mo, who imprinted his talent across two decades from the mid-1980s with a series of starry novels – from The Monkey King to Brownout on Breadfruit Boulevard – picking up prizes, making the minds of his readers resonate and reel.
Remembering Robert Browning - Victorian Britain’s greatest poet
Robert Browning was Victorian Britain’s greatest poet, argues Stuart Kelly – yet who’s celebrating his bicentenary on Monday?
2 commentsBook review: London Underground | The Marriage Plot | Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
William Leith casts his eye over the latest paperbacks
Book reviews: The Olympic Games and the IOC | The Last Crusade | A History of Ancient Egypt
Michael Kerrigan offers his take on a selection of recent books
Interview: Sarah Fraser, author of The Last Highlander
Sarah Fraser talks to David Robinson about the clan she married into (twice) and her biography of its most famous, and tragic, chief
3 commentsBook review: The Red House
MARK Haddon hit it big with The Curious History Of The Dog In The Night-time, a sharp, funny, deeply moving book that most readers have read and a lot of writers have ripped off. His next novel, A Spot Of Bother, was a less cohesive work that blended steadfastly unpretentious bloke-lit with stranger shades of sadness and gore.
Book review: Resetting the moral compass
‘ON THE Offshore Lights,” writes ML Stedman near the beginning of her extraordinary debut novel The Light Between Oceans, “you can live any story you want to tell yourself, and no-one will say you’re wrong”.
Book review: Jubilee Lines
THIS volume is extremely instructive in showing how Carol Ann Duffy has re-imagined the poet laureateship as a more ambassadorial role.
Interview: Francesco Bongiovanni, author of The Decline and Fall of Europe
Should anything be done to stop our continental drift? Michael Pye finds a few nuggets of wisdom in the invective of a dejected Europhile
Book reviews: Lost Perth | Lost Perthshire | Lewis in History and Legend | Savonarola
Michael Kerrigan reviews the latest additions to the literary world
Book reviews: The Commandant | Facing the Torturer
How did two notorious mass murderers get to be that way? There are insights here, but no answers
Interview: Hannah Rothschild, author of The Baroness
When Nica Rothschild first heard Thelonious Monk she knew her old life was over. Her niece Hannah talks family history with Lee Randall
1 commentBook review: Flight
ADAM Thorpe’s last novel, Hodd, a grim anti-Romantic revisionary version of the Robin Hood legends, was shortlisted for the Walter Scott historical novel prize. It was brilliantly written, but difficult, not immediately “accessible” – to employ last year’s Man Booker judges’ term of approval.
Book review: The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker; The Dublin Years
BRAM Stoker occupies a peculiar space in the pantheon of great Gothic novelists. In his lifetime he was better known as the business manager of the actor Henry Irving.
Book review: Until Further Notice, I Am Alive
IN MID-September 2008, Tom Lubbock sent out an e-mail to his friends headed simply “Autumn News”. It stated quite calmly that a tumour had been detected in his brain, which needed to be removed and might prove malignant.
Bookworm: ‘Why do some people like cheese and other people hate it? Do you like cheese?’
Snippets from the past week in the literary world
- Alistair Darling leads ‘No to independence’ fight over tea and biscuits
- Today’s youth not fit to be employed, says car firm Arnold Clark
- Scottish independence: SNP flip-flops over Nato
- The Rumour Mill: Tuesday’s football news and gossip
- Rangers takeover: triple penalty punishment enough, says Johnston
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Weather for Edinburgh
Wednesday 23 May 2012
Today
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Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
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Temperature: 12 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North east
