Why does a new Tolkien biography remain elusive?
His books and television adaptations keep coming, but we know little of J.R.R. Tolkien’s life
Books
Monday
Vince McMahon: the modern-day P.T. Barnum who changed America
The new biography Ringmaster unpacks a controversial legend
Tom Crewe’s The New Life is sophisticated, intelligent and gripping
This book doesn’t pretend that its subjects are twenty-first century people in different clothes
The enigmatic rise of Colleen Hoover
Meet the world’s bestselling author, a self-made forty-three-year-old mom you probably haven’t heard of
Monday
Reading Roald Dahl in a dystopian world
His works are being censored decades after he might have disapproved
Wednesday
Hoover damned
G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage reviewed
The art of the royal memoir
Britain’s royal family sells books like nobody’s business
From Russia with love
Iron Curtain: A Love Story by Vesna Goldsworthy reviewed
Behind closed doors
The Cloisters by Katy Hays reviewed
Bret Easton Ellis’s comeback is a bloody masterpiece
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis reviewed
Quentin Tarantino’s iconoclastic obsessions
How can an established artist, especially one this famous, pivot to criticism?
The struggle of the female musician
Quartet: How Four Women Changed the Musical World by Leah Broad reviewed
Tuesday
Stephen Rubin, the publisher who speaks truth to power
‘If you’re publishing mostly books by people of color and people who are gay, then where’s the diversity?’
Friday
Trainspotting at thirty: an interview with Irvine Welsh
‘It would be very difficult, with the homogenization of culture, to publish a book like Trainspotting now’
Monday
Ford Madox Ford and the decline of the American WASP
They’re struggling to preserve their culture after generations of hedonism and nihilism
Friday
The return of Bret Easton Ellis
The American Psycho and Less Than Zero author discusses his first novel in thirteen years
Exclusive: Pentagon chief details January 6 riot response
Trump’s acting defense secretary Christopher Miller tells all in his new book
Wednesday
The books to watch out for in 2023
Hopefully the new year will see several stars burn brightly in the literary firmament
Tuesday
Of course: all the great women in history were actually men
It all makes sense now
Tuesday
The publishing mega-merger that wasn’t
Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster have failed to merge
