Explore essays and memoir
After Zero Hour
Janine di Giovanni
‘It seemed there was a little piece of Iraqi earth inside me that refused to let me go.’
An (almost) perfect day
Anne De Gelas
‘I think of the self-portrait as a mirror of all the violence that befalls us.’
Anjali Joseph | First Sentence
Anjali Joseph
‘I kept returning to the Beckett stories, a favourite since I came upon them in my late teens.’
Barnby Dun
Colin Grant
‘Restored nature would be a phantom of its former self. The experience would be akin to visiting a wildlife park.’
Best Book of 1981: Lanark
Lorna Gibb
Lorna Gibb on why Alasdair Gray's Lanark is the best book of 1981.
Best Book of 2003: The Curious Life of Robert Hooke
Daisy Hildyard
Daisy Hildyard on why Lisa Jardine's The Curious Life of Robert Hooke is the best book of 2003.
Greg Jackson | First Sentence
Greg Jackson
‘I am being, I believe, about as forthright as I am being coy.’
The Battle for Kessab
Charles Glass
‘No Armenian can forget 1915. From 24 April 1915, which Armenians commemorate as the beginning of a slaughter that in fact started earlier, the Ottoman Empire killed between 650,000 and 1.5 million Armenians in their homes, on death marches and in concentration camps.’
The Cage of You
Kerry Howley
‘They treated their bodies like some exotic animal they’d found fast asleep, beings they needed to wake to truly know.’
