19 November 2005
The Third Man’s Vienna: Celebrating a Film Classic Brigitte Timmermann
Public visits to the sewers of Vienna are rare: the clammy atmosphere can cause breathing problems. Nevertheless in 1994 I visited them with a local Graham Greene enthusiast, Brigitte Timmer-… Read more
22 October 2005
Mussolini’s Italy R. J. B. Bosworth
When Benito Mussolini invaded Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935, Italians were filled with jingoist pride. The dictator triumphantly announced the conquest of the promised sub-Saharan kingdom. ‘He’s like a god,’… Read more
Viragos on the march 25 June 2005
Renaissance Woman Gaia Servadio
Lucrezia Borgia was not the fiend history made her out to be. According to Gaia Servadio, she was a radiant symbol of Renaissance woman and, moreover, a judicious administrator of… Read more
11 December 2004
Hawkwood: The Diabolical Englishman Frances Stonor Saunders
The boil and hiss of mediaeval Hell, as conceived by Dante, is hard for us to imagine. Yet the 1935 Hollywood melodrama, The Div- ine Comedy, contains a ten-minute reconstruction… Read more
2 October 2004
Havoc Ronan Bennett
Born in 1956, Ronan Bennett is a Belfast writer of great gifts. His last novel, The Catastrophist, was a tense parable of conscience set in the Belgian Congo at the… Read more
6 March 2004
The Jesuits Jonathan Wright
In the 16th century Montaigne voiced the fear that missionary endeavour — the white man’s ‘contagion’ — would hasten the ruin of the New World. Though Jesuits played their part… Read more
25 January 2003
I’LL TAKE YOU THERE Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is a prolific, even prolix writer, with more than 50 novels and short-story collections to her name. Yet she writes wonderfully of life’s uncertainties and of American… Read more
30 November 2002
NOBODY’s PERFECT Anthony Lane
Anthony Lane has been film critic for the New Yorker since 1993, and the light lash of his humour is waspish and urbane in its New Yorker-ese. Nobody’s Perfect, a… Read more
Articles and Interviews
6 March 2004
Shortly after Christmas I went to Haiti for the first time in 13 years. The collapse of the Aristide regime was still two months away, but the Caribbean republic was… Read more
7 January 2012
Montserrat, a smoulderingly beautiful volcanic island in the British West Indies, is a 15-minute flight from Antigua. Apart from me, the only passenger on the propeller plane is a birdwatcher… Read more
17 March 2012
The other day my five-year-old Labrador was diagnosed with acute cannabis intoxication. I had been taking Olga for a walk on Hackney Downs when she disappeared behind an abandoned railway.… Read more
Travel Special – Jamaica: Meeting the queen’s man
24 March 2012
This August, Jamaica celebrates the 50th anniversary of independence. Amid the bunting and parades, talk will be of Britain’s continued presence in the island and the role of the monarchy… Read more
21 April 2012
A couple of years ago, a rescue operation was recorded at a lifeboat station in Poole, Dorset. ‘The boat was launched at 13.35p.m. following a call that a man and… Read more
Nicolas Roeg interview: ‘I hate the term “sex scene”’
13 July 2013
‘Oh, some of my films have been attacked with absolute vitriol!’ said Nicolas Roeg, 85, and still one of the darkest and most innovative of post-war British directors. We were… Read more
I proposed to my wife in Haiti. Soon I won’t be able to recognise it
16 August 2014
This summer, I returned to Haiti for the first time in ten years. I was itching to see how the Caribbean republic had changed after the terrible earthquake of 12… Read more
Why I’m now scared of book clubs
12 July 2014
‘Hi Ian!’ the email began. ‘We are a group of mostly females who meet regularly in London to review really good reads. We are currently reading The Dead Yard, and… Read more
