The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, by Kinky Friedman (Faber & Faber, £4.99 in UK)The title doesn't quite say it all, but it says a lotSat Mar 15 1997 - 00:00
Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, by Robin Dunbar (Faber & Faber, £7.99 in UK)Language, it is usually supposed, developed among the males of the human species in order to facilitate hunting-shooting-fishing…Sat Mar 08 1997 - 00:00
The Evil That Men Do, by Brian Masters (Black Swan, £7 99 in UK)Why, Brian Masters asks in this meditation on the nature of good and evil does life turn some people into saints and others into…Sat Mar 08 1997 - 00:00
Mrs Keppel and her, Daughter, by Diana Souhami (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)When Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England in order to marry Wallis Simpson, the Honourable Mrs George Keppel was heard…Sat Mar 08 1997 - 00:00
The First Mrs Wordsworth, by Michael Baldwin (Abacus, £6.99 in UK)Long before his marriage to Mary Hutchinson in 1802, William Wordsworth had enjoyed a passionate dalliance in revolutionary France…Sat Mar 08 1997 - 00:00
Capturing musicians on canvasMOST people, it is probably fair to say, have never thought to the subject of musical images in 18th-century Dublin plasterwork…Sat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
Deadly Serious, by Maggie Gibson (Poolbeg, £4.99)Never mind the title - this murderous romp is anything but serious, with Maggie Gibson giving the traditional mystery story an…Sat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier (Arrow, £5.99 in UK)"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..Sat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
A Guide to the Concerto, edited by Robert Layton (OUP, £12.99 in UK)Having already guided the world through the symphony, Robert Layton turned his attention to the concerto form with these 12 essays…Sat Feb 22 1997 - 00:00
The Brimstone Wedding, by Barbara Vine (Penguin, £5.99 in UK)The doomy mood of this rural chiller is established in the opening sentence: "The clothes of the dead won't wear longSat Feb 15 1997 - 00:00
Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, by Marian Keyes, (Mandarin, £5.99 in UK)This is by way of being a cult fiction, having spent goodness knows how many weeks on the bestseller listsSat Feb 15 1997 - 00:00
Original Sin, by P.D. James (Penguin, £5.99 in UK)Commander Adam Dalgliesh - "terrifying enough to the innocent, so God knows what he does to the guilty" is confronted by a puzzle…Sat Feb 15 1997 - 00:00
Abseiling to ByzantiumTHE Greeks still refer to it a "stin polis", meaning simply "the city"; Turks, with an affectionate or exasperated shake of the…Sat Feb 15 1997 - 00:00
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare: screenplay, introduction and film diary (Chatto & Windus, £12,99 in UK)If you aren't already chewing your nails to the quick with impatience for the opening of Kenneth Branagh's four hour film extravaganza…Sat Feb 15 1997 - 00:00
Alva, by Rose Doyle (Pan, £5.99 in UK)Rose Doyle certainly has her finger on the pulse of popular Irish fictionSat Feb 08 1997 - 00:00
Tales from Bective Bridge, by Mary Lavin (Town House, £6.95)Some of these stories first appeared in 1943, and in an author's introduction Mary Lavin confessed that she had, with varying…Sat Feb 08 1997 - 00:00
OPERATIC ARCHITECTARIA upon aria, gesture upon gesture, movement upon stage: out of such things are operas constructed with painstaking thoroughness…Sat Feb 08 1997 - 00:00
First Time, by Lara Harte (Phoenix, £5.99 in UK)Anyone who deals with 14 year olds on a regular basis will sigh at the idea of reading about them as well and this novel, by …Sat Feb 01 1997 - 00:00
Eyeshot by Lynn S. Hightower (New English Library, £5.99 in UK)When the homicide detective is a mother of two, and the victim is also a mother of two, the stage is set either for an unusually…Sat Feb 01 1997 - 00:00
Duplicate Keys, by Jane Smiley (Flamingo, £5.99 in UK)From the opening paragraph of this tense, nervy thriller it is obvious that one is in the hands of a very good writer indeedSat Feb 01 1997 - 00:00
The Road Ahead, by Bill Gates (Penguin, £7.99 in UK)Thank goodness for Bill GatesSat Jan 25 1997 - 00:00
Montserrat Caballe: Casta Diva, by Robert Pullen and Stephen Taylor (Indigo, £9.99 in UK)If we're in the mood to listen to Rossini or Donizetti nowadays, we can just go to the shelf and select a CD from the dozens …Sat Jan 25 1997 - 00:00
OPERAGiovanni Pacini: "Saffo"National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland/Wexford Festival Opera Chorus/Maurizio Benini Pedaci/Pentcheva…Fri Jan 24 1997 - 00:00
Artless art, catching the starlightIT HAS to be one of the most instantly recognisable images in classical musicWed Jan 22 1997 - 00:00
Ian Fleming, by Andrew Lycett (Phoenix, £8.99 in UK)Fleming is often said to have led a life as dramatic as that of his fictional creation, James Bond, but on the evidence of this…Sat Jan 18 1997 - 00:00
Sleepers: A True Story, by Lorenzo Carcaterra (Arrow, £5.99 in UK)An uncomfortable blend of sentimentality and viciousness, not to mention the sort of beam me up memoir writing which effortlessly…Sat Jan 18 1997 - 00:00
Our Lady of the Potatoes, by Duncan Sprott (Faber & Faber, £6.99 in UK)An exotic creature these days, a historical novel - and this one is more exotic than mostSat Jan 18 1997 - 00:00
Tart observations about life, cats and marmaladeI was going to give this book an unqualified welcome, and recommend it heartily - especially to single people of any gender who…Fri Jan 17 1997 - 00:00
THE SUNDAY CLUBALTHOUGH the morning is not actually sunny, the generous quantities of light which stream into the main concourse of the Hugh…Thu Jan 16 1997 - 00:00
Maxwell: The Final Verdict, by Tom Bower (Harpercollins, £6.99 in UK)"The book the brothers tried to stop", proclaims the cover - and no wonder, for Bower has unearthed it all, in gruesome physical…Sat Jan 11 1997 - 00:00
The Young Oxford Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Dennis Pepper (OUP, £6.99 in UK)I doubt that a generation of young folk raised on the visibly grisly delights of Point Horror and Stephen King would be greatly…Sat Jan 11 1997 - 00:00
MASTER of the UNUSUALCORRECT me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that it is unusual for a rising young international conductor of considerable repute…Fri Jan 10 1997 - 00:00
Wicked Women, by Fay Weldon (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)Wicked is the word: here be, wicked folk of every gender and sexual orientation, and wicked humour, tooSat Jan 04 1997 - 00:00
Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell (Penguin Classics, £2.50 in UK)For anyone fascinated by social history, Gaskell's ghastly realist portrayal of Manchester life in the "Hungry Forties" of the…Sat Jan 04 1997 - 00:00
The big league beckonsOPTIMISM and opera just don't go together: doom, gloom and the prediction of imminent demise are, after all, the stuff of real…Fri Jan 03 1997 - 00:00
The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan (Flamingo, £6.99 in UK)Olivia Yee hates her older sister Kwan, who arrives from China and turns her five year old world upside down with her ghostly…Sat Dec 28 1996 - 00:00
Junk Mail, by Will Self (Penguin, £7.99 in UK)This book might just as well have been entitled Know Thy Self comprising as it does an entertaining and thought provoking trip…Sat Dec 28 1996 - 00:00
Romanian delegation celebrates culture linkBECKETT and Ionesco, Brancusi and JoyceMon Dec 16 1996 - 00:00
A Pacifist's War, by Frances Partridge (Phoenix £6.99 in UK)This volume of diary entries covering the years 1939-45 might equally be entitled The Bloomsbury Set's War, for Frances Partridge…Sat Dec 07 1996 - 00:00
Terence Conran: The Authorised Biography, by Nicholas Ind (Sidgwick & Jackson, £14.99 in UK)As you would expect, this is a large and rather handsome paperback blessed with trendy typefaces, uncluttered pages and any number…Sat Dec 07 1996 - 00:00
Morality Play, by Barry Unsworth (Penguin, £5.99 in UK)Few novels strike one as perfect, but there is more than a hint of perfection about Barry Unsworth's little jewel of a story, …Sat Dec 07 1996 - 00:00
The Heart of India, by Mark Tully (Penguin, £6.99 in UK)Few Britons, surely, know India as well as Mark Tully, who has lived and worked there as the BBC's south Asia correspondent for…Sat Dec 07 1996 - 00:00
Lights! Music! Opera!FOR its winter season programme the newly-named Opera Ireland has chosen two of the oldest operatic favourites in the book - …Wed Nov 27 1996 - 00:00
The Granta Book of the Family (Granta, £8.99 in UK)Sometimes it's best to open an anthology with no prior warning; no introductions or explanations or justificationsSat Nov 23 1996 - 00:00
Don Carlos and Company, by Christopher Morgan (CUP, £10.99 in UK)Even the most avid opera fan often has only the haziest notion of the true stories behind the tunes, it being difficult enough…Sat Nov 23 1996 - 00:00
