Published 150 years after the publication of Alice in Wonderland, this biography is a real treat of a read. Following his award winning biography of Charles Dickens, Douglas-Fairhurst takes us on a marvellous journey through the mind of the quiet academic Charles Dodgson and his alter ego Lewis Carroll. “‘Who in the world am I?’ Read More
John Aubrey (1625-97) has done it again – namely, got someone else to write his book for him. An odd chain of events is thereby generated. Aubrey – endlessly busying himself in retrieving, preserving, and collating other people’s work, whether contemporary or in England’s recent past – left himself little time or energy to do Read More
German history of the 20th century is an ugly and twisted story to tell . Thomas Harding’s narrative of The House by the Lake takes a personal yet critical approach to this subject. He tells the story of a weekend house at Lake Glienecke, built and once owned by Harding’s Jewish ancestors at the edge of Read More
In her grand work, The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf sets out to restore Alexander von Humboldt (b. 1769) to his rightful place in the pantheon of scientific greats. By introducing the worldview that “nature is a living whole”, a “web of life”, and that man – through deforestation, farming and industrial practices – was Read More
An award winning journalist, Marian Pallister is based in Argyll. Her mother inherited cottages which were ‘drowned’ for the reservoir in the Cruachan area, binding her family to this location and community. Her previous works often focus on Argyll and the socio-economic and political changes which have affected this area. It is, then, informed by Read More
Andrew Hussey is a professor of Cultural History at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. His latest book, The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and Its Arabs, seems to be an extension of his previous one, Paris: The Secret History. However, this work is more overtly political as it reveals the relationship Read More
Despite Variety’s recent claims of his demise, Terry Gilliam is yet at large. As the cartoonist turned filmmaker’s 75th birthday approaches, he shows no sign of slowing down. Having spent the greater part of this year hopping continents in a whirlwind of publicity, taking his 2014 feature, The Zero Theorem, to Europe, touring with his Read More
Once Claire was asleep again, the professor removed a chunk of her brain – the ‘epileptogenic’ part – and dropped it into a bin. ‘What was that chunk responsible for?’ I asked him. He shrugged. ‘No idea,’ he said; ‘we just know it’s not eloquent.’ The dedication at the front of this book is simply Read More
“The longing for home and the longing for love are so alike as to be inseparable.” Malachy Tallack, journalist, musician, song-writer, is one of a new generation of travel writers for whom a journey is as much an opportunity for philosophical musings as a geographical experience. Like many of us, myself included, who spend much Read More
Alice in Wonderland is quite absurd, mostly improbable, but generally not stupid. The reason for this final attribution is that there is an underlying reason why ridiculousness reigns over wonderland. In Carroll’s novel, the reason is rather lazily explained as it “all having been a dream”, but this distinction between implausible and stupid is something Read More