I had more fun with spooks and detectives in the first of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses series and my old friend Raymond Chandler ...

Short History of Life on Earth ), listeners complained that I read too slowly, but mostly that I had had too much fun adding ...

Summer did make an appearance, of a sorts, but it was wet, wet, wet. It was the wettest year since records began, in fact ...

In early months of the year I must pass the branding hoardings; by the end of the year I am walking past the newly opened ...

Last winter seemed to go on for ages. At least, way back at the end of January I remember desperately longing for summer. And then I was made redundant, which hadn’t been on my bingo card for 2024.

So here, in no particular order, are my ten best reads of the year, with the overall winner at the end. Amor Towles: A Gentleman In Moscow Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, late of ‘Idle Hour’, an estate ...

Daniel Finkelstein: Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad I am sure you both know that Daniel Finkelstein is a journalist and Conservative peer, and you probably are also aware that he is, like me, a Red-Sea ...

Waiting for Christmas Today is the first day of Advent. In Christian tradition this is a time of preparation and waiting for the arrival of the infant Jesus on Christmas Day. These days Advent is ...

(And whoever’s writing it would be lying on the sofa by the Christmas tree right now, fretting about how they really ought to be working on that dissertation instead of reading a novel– the first ...

This year I read 64 books, the first time since records began (2014) that the number has exceeded my age in years (I am 62). The total might be inflated, though, as some of the books have been ...