"Where else will you read that the octogenarian Jean Rhys loved to shop at Miss Selfridge?" I reviewed Margaret Atwood's memoir Book of Lives - her 65th book in 65 years - featuring school bullies, an opera about home economics, and the end of the Second World War ("As I recall, it was drizzling").

"The best way to read him would be with all your devices on the other side of a locked door." Me on Nobel literature laureate László Krasznahorkai, a writer who "fits into the Nobel mould so fully that if he didn’t exist, the committee would have had to make him up."

This made me laugh more than it probably should 😂 #funny

v pleased by v kind review of The Revolutionists (published on Friday) in the Times. esp as by legendary Simon Sebag Montefiore. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

“Formidable female novelists, ghastly literary men, a faith-shaken poet, eunuchs, pirates, horny wolves, international terrorists…" It's been great fun to judge this prize ... and here are the six finalists ... www.thebailliegiffordprize.co.uk/inside-the-c...

ICYMI: Jason Burke, Helen Garner, Richard Holmes, Justin Marozzi, Adam Weymouth and Frances Wilson have been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 👇 #BookSky

Me on Gore Vidal's centenary👇

I often write disparagingly about the internet’s slide towards video but YouTube has also educated me in poetry, philosophy music and art Here is a YouTube education - a list of videos which form a kind of curriculum in the humanities and the sciences jmarriott.substack.com/p/a-youtube-...

"Barker can turn on a traditional novelist’s skills. But mostly she chooses not to follow the trad path. She would rather be the Picasso of fiction, breaking the rules to see what comes out." Me on Nicola Barker's energising and exasperating new novel, TonyInterruptor:

"He was a logophile, and loved obscure and little-used words, such as logophile." John Banville on the new biography of William F Buckley, one of the old arch-conservatives who "would have deplored Donald Trump as a vulgar arriviste, but by jingo they would have voted for him."

My review of Derek Peterson's quirky and intriguing book on Idi Amin's Uganda: www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

This was fun to do ... the best 25 British/Irish novels of the past 25 years www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

“I was born for something more than mere sanity. I was born for so much joy.” My review of Jennifer Dawson's 1961 novel The Ha-Ha, reissued by Faber Editions, a story of a woman in and out of a mental institution, whose "emotions surge and plunge, and she’s left hanging on like a sailor in a gale."

Ever wondered what the deal is with the InsideSuccess kids outside London stations who tell you they are raising money to stop knife crime? I have. Well @jim.londoncentric.media of London Centric has done the leg work, as ever. substack.com/inbox/post/1...

I reviewed this history of organised crime. Full of fascinating stuff ... and I loved the story about the owner of Porky's, a Miami topless bar, who tried to buy a Russian submarine www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Please enjoy this Klimt Eastwood

On Bullshit came out 20 years ago. Harry Frankfurt was prescient about the post-truth social menace. Our age is so much bullshittier ... www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

I read a superb new history of Carthage by Eve MacDonald - a finer cicerone than Flaubert - for @thetimes.com. My lead review today: www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Great to see Ben Markovits longlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel The Rest of Our Lives - a slim study of middle-aged ennui set on the US highway. Here's my review for @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Thirteen novels, eleven publishers, nine nationalities, seven women, six men, five Brits, four books under 200 pages, three Fabers, two debutants ... and one dud. My rundown of a quietly solid Booker Prize 2025 longlist:

Private Eye hits the nail on the head

In the wake of Salt-Path-gate, I wrote about some of the juiciest literary frauds, including JT Leroy (whose fright wig made Warhol’s look understated), Eugenio Montale (did Clive James ever recover?), William Boyd, and of course the guv’nor, the constitutionally shameless James Frey:

An honour for me to write about the wonderful novel, Under The Volcano: www.thetimes.com/culture/book... (Kudos to the subs too - "heroic, fervid and funny" is a fine summary.)

A big, bustling novel about love, friendship, money, ambition and the 21st century, packed with humour and intelligent observations … I finished it tear-stained' @thetimes.com Read the full review of #DraytonandMackenzie by Alexander Starritt 🌊 shorturl.at/KAmZT

The washed-up actress amid Rome's ruins; the smugglers and gossip-mongers of Morocco; the Sicilian heart-throb who couldn't get it up; and Maigret on holiday ("It was a crime of passion." "Don't be ridiculous! She was nearly fifty"). I wrote about great novels set in favourite holiday destinations:

I just bought a packet of cigarettes for the first time since 2016. Bloody hell, £18! Why are there no riots on the streets!

"It wasn't just a monetary robbery, but a symbolic one. The Northern Bank building is a great 1970s edifice in concrete: a building you can imagine Bill Bixby walking out of, coat over shoulder, in the credits for The Incredible Hulk." Me on Glenn Patterson's book about the IRA's £26.5m bank job:

Blackmail! The Typing Ghost! Diabolism! Sudden death! Every time I read a Muriel Spark novel I'm reminded just how original, weird, dark and funny her imagination was

I enjoyed Lee Cole’s novel Fulfillment [sic - US spelling], with its fizzy energy of people on the make - even if they don’t really know what they want - and its astute ear for the verbal racket of modern life, even if you can sometimes hear the clunk of the author pulling the levers of the plot.

Salman Rushdie shares one of the worst horrors of his time under fatwa: getting Harold Pinter’s terrible poems faxed to him.

The Bad Seed by William March. It was published in 1954 and it tells the story of a perfect little girl who is, in fact, a psychopath www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Very happy to have the lead book review in today’s @thetimes.com ✨ On Judith Mackrell’s lively joint biography of Gwen and Augustus John. www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

“What struck me reading the book a second time was how much of Wolff’s writing contains fatherly wisdom - now that he himself is the father figure he lacked as a child.” Me on rereading This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff, who might just be the best living American writer:

Shopping trolleys! Folklore! Techno! And a green-skinned heroine in a dress made out of Tesco carriers bags. 'Riverskin' by Mike Edwards is The Times children's book of the week. A bold and atmospheric story for readers 9+. @walkerbooksuk.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/article/3a09...

Full-page review in the Sunday Times culture supplement today. “a cheerfully eccentric introduction to London clubland...enormously entertaining...There’s a great deal of practical information here as well...Thévoz makes a persuasive case as to why you should join one.”

Book of the week in The Times! “To show us More as other than saint or villain, her new, hugely readable biography immerses us in More’s busy, messy and changing world.”

"It makes vivid a lost moment and place in time. It has a winning dark humour, and the unforgettable energy of a copper whacking a ned with his truncheon on a Saturday night." @robbiemillen.bsky.social on Gordon Williams' 1969-Booker-shortlisted novel From Scenes Like These, now reissued:

Delighted to have written a lovely piece today for The Times’ Rereading on Vile Bodies, a book where very little happens – obviously Evelyn Waugh’s best www.thetimes.com/article/e0d8...

"Ye're an auld hoor, Morag Coll". Adding the reissued 'From Scenes Like These' by Gordon Williams to the book pile immediately. Sounds tremendous. Great review @robbiemillen.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/article/716e...

Thoroughly enjoyed this @picadorbooks.bsky.social reissue of the 1969 novel, From Scenes Like These. How many novelists can claim to also have co-written novels with Terry Venables? www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

"A minor classic with the down-at-heel air of the best English boarding-house novels, to put alongside the works of Patrick Hamilton or Jean Rhys." Me on Alexander Baron's sly, serious and shocking 1963 novel The Lowlife, recently reissued by Faber Editions:

“Not many authors would have the chutzpah to reimagine America’s dark tradition of lynching and turn it into a comic novel.” @robbiemillen.bsky.social @doubledaybooks.bsky.social

“Not many writers would have the chutzpah to reimagine America’s dark tradition of lynching and turn it into a comic novel.” @robbiemillen.bsky.social @doubledaybooks.bsky.social

Very lively review by Justin Webb of Original Sin, the inside story of how the Democrat establishment tried to gaslight America over Biden's decline www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Once again left wondering why all these blokes in the Eurovision audience left their wives at home. The ladies would really enjoy it, lads - give them a treat next year!

Severed heads, petrified penises, revolting peasants ... a very entertaining review by @pratinavanil.bsky.social in today's @thetimes.com #History thetimes.com/culture/book...

We're cresting the wave of Austenmania with this lovely, witty interview with Gill "Miss Austen" Hornby in today's @thetimes.com www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

This septic isle My latest, on pox and proles in 14th-century England, for @thetimes.com: This septic isle — England in the calamitous 14th century www.thetimes.com/article/0ca8...

It's Normal People for pensioners (sort of)! When 70-somethings June ("she's the grass that needs cutting. She's yesterday's eyeliner today") and Ray ("he's one of his GP's best patients") meet, we get Andrew Meehan's charming, subversive, off-kilter story of late love, Best Friends. I loved it.