In the shadow of Vesuvius
An exclusive extract from Daisy Dunn’s new biography of Pliny
Books
Sunday
Friday
Kingdoms of the wicked
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century by Frank Dikötter reviewed
The audacity of verse
The Music of Time: Poetry in the Twentieth Century by John Burnside reviewed
Sunday
The boy on the hillside
A short story by Susan Hill
Monday
The Spectator’s Books of the Year 2019
Spectator contributors choose their favorite titles of 2019
Friday
The haunting of Russell Kirk
The founding father of 20th-century American conservatism was also a connoisseur of the supernatural and a bestselling novelist
We are all Greta now
A lot of children’s literature today is horribly right-on
Friday
Sarah Dessen and the thin-skinned world of Young Adult fiction
Why do so many writers have a victim complex?
Friday
The sadness of Mrs Bridge
On Evan Connell’s novel of Kansas City: A Slightly Foxed books essay
Monday
Is Lou Reed a rock ’n’ roll Dostoevsky?
I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Collected Lyrics by Lou Reed reviewed
A vacation in a hell of a state
North Korea Journal by Michael Palin reviewed
Wednesday
If only Georges Simenon had been a bit more like Maigret
The pipe-smoking detective’s creator was a sex addict who died rich and lonely in a vast Swiss château
Tuesday
A colonial adventure in Mohawk Valley
Into the wild: A Slightly Foxed books essay
Monday
Donald Trump and the art of the lawsuit
Plaintiff in Chief: a Portrait of Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits by James D. Zirin reviewed
Wednesday
Rand Paul offers a thorough take down of today’s left
The Case Against Socialism by Rand Paul reviewed
Tuesday
The Nobel Committee honors an apologist for genocide
Peter Handke has compared Bosnian Serbs laying the siege on Sarajevo with Native Americans laying siege on a camp of white colonizers
Harold Bloom, the Falstaff of lit crit
Bloom was a working-class Jew from the Bronx who, like Saul Bellow, had autodidactified himself to the gills despite being in the university
Monday
Race to the finish
Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race by Thomas Chatterton Williams reviewed
Monday
Blondie ambition
Face It by Debbie Harry reviewed
Wednesday
The passion of Bari Weiss
How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss reviewed
