This well-researched biography of Muriel Spark offers fresh insights into her life and work, writes Allan Massie ...

In the summer of 1953, Muriel Spark – not yet the famous novelist behind The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie – was en route from ...

Cod-liver oil (1947-51), mercifully, passed away swiftly. Liver (1947-98) lasted a little longer. Avocados didn’t arrive ...

Harriet Cullen has produced a candid portrait of a sharp-tongued socialite and newspaper proprietor’s wife – her mother, Lady ...

The enduring fascination that has evolved around Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited has been extraordinary since it ...

You already know the biographical facts. Arthur Evelyn St John Waugh was born in 1903, the second son of Arthur Waugh, author, literary critic and the managing director of the publishing house Chapman ...

So did Evelyn Waugh. After his comical adventures as a private schoolmaster ... In 1945 he hit the jackpot with Brideshead Revisited. His subsequent books were what’s called well received (not highly ...

John le Carré meets Evelyn Waugh in Mann’s terrific second novel (after The Torqued Man), set mostly in California on the eve ...

Welcome to Oxford University in the era of identity politics, where students discuss “lived experience”, acknowledge their ...

Conservatives should also engage with higher culture. Great literature, old and new, must be protected, championed, and ...

One of my favourites moments in Sydney Pollack’s 1985 film adaptation of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa comes when Meryl Streep tries to divert a flow of water that threatens her coffee crop. She stands ...

Taylor Jenkins Reid recalls a moment writing her new novel, “Atmosphere: A Love Story,” set against NASA’s robust 1980s ...