As the burning of the byre dies down it is “[a]s if the black gates of hell have been cast open.” The byre belonged to Barnabas Kane, his wife Eskra and their teenage son Billy, in this powerful, sad and unrelentingly dark novel by Paul Lynch, author of the much lauded Red Sky in Morning. Read More
With 24 hours to go until her daughter Agustina’s wedding, Constanza finds a spot of mildew like substance on her inner thigh. She does an internet search to try and discover what it is and the apparent normality of this reaction belies the truth of the mildew, which, like many aspects of this novel, may Read More
“I had at the end of 1968 become literary manager of the Royal Court Theatre. This had happened largely by accident.” This kind of lucky accident often happened to playwright and director David Hare, who in a poll in 2000 by the National Theatre, had five plays selected in the top 100 and was 10th 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