It is hard to overestimate how socially divisive and intellectually muting the issue of school choice has become in recent years among a certain class of parent. Other than war in Iraq, no subject is more likely to ruin a good party or wreck a close friendship. Twenty years ago, parents who leaned to the political left were confident that the state was, if not great, then good enough. Middle-class [...]

One Day begins in bed. Priya Patnaik is masturbating, with pleasure, while her husband Ben Tennyson, lying beside her, scours his book, The Inner Game of Tennis, for insights into what's gone wrong with his game. The inner meaning of this opening scene isn't hard to read; the rest of the book, which takes place in just one day in the life of this couple, is the painful quest on [...]

Max Beerbohm disliked illustrated books. "If I cannot see the characters in a novel, then they are not worth seeing," he once wrote. "If I can see them, then any other man's definite presentment of them seems to be an act of impertinence to myself and of impiety to the author." When he came to publish Zuleika Dobson, in 1911, Beerbohm had a clause written into the contract stipulating that [...]

Here is a heart-warming story to dispel the first chill of autumn, the tale of a lonely, sensitive child who endures neglect and upheaval in early life, followed in adulthood by gruelling factory work, a broken marriage and near-starvation, yet who, through a combination of perseverance, intelligence and hard work, wins through in the end to find fame, fortune and happiness. And that's just the author.

Michel Faber's personal life [...]

Born in England in 1931, Fay Weldon began life as Franklin Birkinshaw. Right from the start, she had one of those eccentric childhoods that so often turn sensitive children into writers, if they do not destroy them first. Her parents' marriage was already foundering, and soon collapsed completely. The next 12 years were spent shuttling across New Zealand between her tireless, talented mother and her handsome, philandering father. In 1946, [...]

In his recent exploration of the art of biography, Works on Paper, Michael Holroyd points out: "The biographer wants the best of both worlds - the artistic freedom to invent and the reliance on the authenticated fact." Perhaps it's the impulse, conscious or unconscious, in many biographers to refute this charge that has led to biographies putting on so much weight in recent years. The fatter the better seems to [...]

Somewhere between the third and eighth offering in this collection of Muriel Spark's complete short stories - there are 41 in all - I found myself transformed from a casual fan into an ardent admirer. From "The Seraph and the Zambesi", written in 1951, to "Christmas Fugue", written in 2000, there is not a single disappointment. The early stories set in South Africa are hard-edged, harshly lit compared to the [...]

It was absolutely predictable that Naomi Wolf would write a book about motherhood. She belongs to a generation of women, which is also my generation, for whom becoming and being a mother have undone every comfortable feminist certainty we ever had, and whose trademark response is to write about it. Reared on a weirdly neutered brand of feminism, you regarded motherhood as just a vague idea to keep up your [...]

When James Boswell first met "the Stupendous Johnson", as he called him, in May 1763, he recorded in his London Journal "a man of most dreadful appearance . . . troubled with sore eyes, the palsy and the king's evil. He is very slovenly in his dress and speaks with a most uncouth voice. Yet his great knowledge and strength of expression command vast respect and render him very excellent [...]

A number of titles would have done equally well for this book. Self Obsessed, Self Satisfied and Self Deluding come to mind. On second thoughts, perhaps the author is perfectly aware that self-abuse is a euphemism for masturbation, in which case his choice of title is just fine. I don't mean to be unkind. In fact, my heart goes out to Jonathan Self for his appalling parents, and even more [...]