BooksPodcast

Salman Rushdie is one of our most distinguished writers, having made a shattering entrance with Midnight’s Children (now coming out as a film). He ascended to an unwecome level of notoriety when The Satanic Verses provoked Ayatollah Khomeini to issue … Continue reading →

Sir Terry Pratchett is a legend. The Discworld series set the gold standard for comic fantasy. Tim has been a fan since the very first book, and in this rare interview from 1995 he talked to Terry about the eighteenth … Continue reading →

Fifty years a star. Gracefulness incarnate. Irresistable to women. Vain and arrogant, perhaps, but with so much to boast of. But enough about Tim. Mick Jagger is by contrast an accountant. You think you know him. The drugs. Marianne Faithfull … Continue reading →

The Gzilt came close to being one of the founding civilisations of the Culture, but they have come to the point where they are ready to Sublime to the next level of existence. You might think that their minds would … Continue reading →

A woman dies for no apparent reason in a church in Fleet Street. A pair of children were playing Witch-Hunter nearby and they placed a curse on her. This is meat and drink to Bryant and May, the superannuated detectives … Continue reading →

Richard Dawkins has said that there is no such thing as a Muslim child, only the child of Muslim parents. Saint Richard’s admirers are wont to characterise the imposition of religious delusions as a variety of child-abuse but not all … Continue reading →

The writer Alwyn Turner has spotted a fascinating statistical anomaly and it is this:  the generation to which he belongs has produced significantly fewer front rank politicians than those either side of it. Or indeed any generation within living memory. … Continue reading →

Can government action fix a broken economy? Eighty years ago John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek arrived at diametrically opposed conclusions. Far from being a dry and technical academic argument, it was then and is now the central division within … Continue reading →

Larry Watson is better known in his native America than in the UK, but Tim has been a fan since Larry’s first novel Montana 1948. Eight novels have followed, each one telling a compelling story in Larry’s characteristic limpid prose. … Continue reading →

Political diaries can be turgid and self-serving or they can be witty and revealing. Chris Mullins diaries are firmly in the second category.  The final volume,  A Walk-On Part, is brilliantly insightful, satisfyingly indiscreet, tender and tough, and marvellously resonant … Continue reading →