Skymeadow Charlie Hart, Constable, 288pp, £16.99 The playwright Terence Rattigan had a rule when he was asked about reviews: “When you’re writing about something you like but about which you have important reservations, the proper thing is to put your approval at the top of the notice and then bring up the reservations afterwards”. So

Wolfe drew on a tradition of conservative satire and politically incorrect social criticism

Last week I went to the funeral of my dear friend Philip Kerr, who wrote more than 30 novels. Many of these – as we learnt from his agent, Caradoc King, in his splendid eulogy – were sold for “north of a million dollars”. Philip was just 62 when he died but left a legacy

When Damian Collins received his first Holy Communion in the 1980s at St Mary’s Catholic secondary school in rural Herefordshire, he was made an altar boy almost straight away. Seeing that he was a natural in his new role, one of the older parish ladies exclaimed: “Damian will be a bishop before he knows it.”

With Jacob Rees-Mogg now the bookies’ favourite to be the next Tory leader, 7-1 is too good a price not to have a Christmas bet on Boris Johnson making perhaps his biggest comeback yet, just as many are writing him off. My guess is that not being the front-runner to succeed Theresa May will suit

Tom Wolfe, who immortalised the phrase “Master of the Universe” in Bonfire of the Vanities 30 years ago, lives in exactly the sort of apartment owned by the book’s bond-trader protagonist Sherman McCoy: “One of those apartments the mere thought of which ignites flames of greed and covetousness under people all over New York, and

If you want to see an electrifying new play that features a mercurial performance by Paddy Considine as a reformed IRA activist and has a tortured Irish priest who is as conflicted and anguished as any creation by Graham Greene, then make sure you get to see Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman at the Gielgud Theatre.

Anybody watching Poldark will have noticed three things about epistolary communication in the late 18th century. They had no envelopes, their quill handwriting was elegant and, above all, delivery was usually the same day – making the Regency postal service considerably more efficient than today’s overpriced service. I mention this as for Valentine’s Day this