Explore essays and memoir
1911, The Other Revolution
Isabel Hilton
‘Anniversaries, of course, can be a two-edged sword: they invite historical reappraisal.’
1979
Aminatta Forna
‘What happened in 1979 has happened many times before and many times since, in places where people have set themselves free and believed with all their hearts that the freedom they had fought for was real and lasting, only to be recaptured.’
A Dynasty of Album Cover Art
Lemi Ghariokwu
‘The music is as powerful as it gets and beneath his knife-edge, cutting sarcasm, Fela’s voice rages.’
A Fight in Bethnal Green
Jeremy Harding
‘There was no sizing up, no graceful footwork, none of the rhetoric of the game: this was unmitigated invective.’
A Hand Made Art
Per Gedin
‘This new kind of ‘planned’ best-seller invariably influences every other form of book production, most notably that of the book selling.’
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me
David Gates
‘It took longer and longer for the next one to come, and then there wasn’t a next one.’
A Journey into Afghanistan
Peregrine Hodson
‘We had been travelling for a week, and had reached the territory of the Hesb Nasr: a rival group of mujahedin who were notorious for ambushing travellers, stealing their weapons and skinning their victims.’
A Mingling | State of Mind
Siri Hustvedt
‘My empathy may become a vehicle of insight for me and therefore help me to help you or it may debilitate me altogether, make me so sad I am no good to you whatsoever.’
A Plausible Portrait
Ted Hodgkinson
‘My friends say I am secretive and devious,’ he wrote in the introduction to Picasso and Dora. ‘They’re right.’
Above the Tree Line
Teva Harrison
Teva Harrison visits and illustrates the Northwest Passage through the Canadian arctic for Granta 141: Canada
Abscessed Tooth
Debra Gwartney
‘Silence allows me to pretend that this happened to someone else a long time ago, and not to me.’
Actively Portly
Ian Hamilton
‘When Ian Rush was asked to explain his failure to score goals for Juventus he replied that being in Italy was like being in a foreign country.’
Actus Tragicus
Sir John Eliot Gardiner
‘Bach devises an ingenious symmetrical structure to underpin in music the theological division between Law and Gospel. ’
Adam’s Navel
Stephen Jay Gould
‘Since Omphalos is such spectactular nonsense, readers may rightly ask why I choose to discuss it at all. I do so, first of all, because its author was such a serious and fascinating man.’
Addressing Mental Health Through Reading Well
Debbie Hicks
‘Reading Well is more than just a booklist – it represents the power of reading to change lives.’
After Gandhi
Trevor Fishlock
‘His room is as he left it, furnished with a carpet, a spinning wheel, a low white table, a mattress and cushion.’
After Zero Hour
Janine di Giovanni
‘It seemed there was a little piece of Iraqi earth inside me that refused to let me go.’
Airds Moss
Kathleen Jamie
‘It could almost have been Neolithic, an ancient and mysterious earthworks.’
All That Was Familiar
Abubakar Adam Ibrahim
The story of two women fleeing Boko Haram in north-east Nigeria.
American Maniac
Rebekah Frumkin
‘I would peel wrappers off sandwiches, remove noodles from their boxes, fry up meat before any authorities had the chance to track me and my bounty down.’
Among the Tulips
Richard Holmes
‘When young James Boswell arrived in Holland in August 1763 at the age of twenty-two, his first impulse was to commit suicide.‘
An (almost) perfect day
Anne De Gelas
‘I think of the self-portrait as a mirror of all the violence that befalls us.’
An Egyptian in Baghdad
Amitav Ghosh
‘It was exactly three weeks since Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and miraculously, Abu-Ali, the old shopkeeper, was on his feet.’
An Open Letter to Mbeki
Petina Gappah
‘You are human, Mr Mbeki, and are therefore prey to the resentments and obstinacies that plague the mere mortal.’
An Unfathomable Ship
Uwe Johnson
‘It is the name of an American ammunition ship which went aground in the summer of 1944; as a result the ship sank, since which time only the tips of its derricks and masts and a corner of the bridge are visible.’
