Bryan Appleyard

Jan 24, 2025 | thespectator.com | Bryan Appleyard |Cressida Bonas |John Davidson |Philip Womack

In Paris in 1740 the hangman publicly burned his most famous book. In England some of the best and brightest — Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Bishop George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and John Wesley — lined up to destroy his reputation. The book was 1714’s The Fable of the Bees and the author was Sir Bernard Mandeville, popularly known as the Man-Devil.

Sep 12, 2024 | thespectator.com | James Innes-Smith |Bryan Appleyard |Joanna Pocock |Francis Beckett

Lee Child has sold more than 200 million books. He reckons his royalties at about a dollar per book. He doesn’t write short stories to make money. He contributes to anthologies, largely pro bono. “Fabergé eggs they ain’t,” he says, in the introduction to Safe Enough and Other Stories, but they are real gems nonetheless. With no global readership to worry about and no commercial interests involved, Child was free to have fun.

Sep 12, 2024 | thespectator.com | James Innes-Smith |Bryan Appleyard |Alexander Larman |Amelia Butler-Gallie

Can anyone name the actors in the new Alien: Romulus movie? No, me neither. Which seems odd for such a massive franchise, but then I struggle to name a single film star under the age of about thirty-five, and I consider myself a movie buff. As is often the case with the release of a new sequel, I returned to the original for reappraisal. Yes, Ridley Scott’s masterwork is still frightening and expertly paced, but what makes the film exceptional is the diversity of the acting talent.

Sep 12, 2024 | thespectator.com | Bryan Appleyard |Simon Parkin |Joan Collins |Roger Kimball

The memory of Tsutomu Yamaguchi will be with me for some time. Though wounded, he survived the Hiroshima atom bomb and returned to his home town, Nagasaki. Three days later, he survived another nuclear attack. He died in 2010, aged ninety-three. The Invention of Good and Evil is a fat, complex, good-natured and intriguing book is full of such memorable material. Hanno Sauer is a German philosopher with an all-encompassing mind and a capacity to entertain.

Sep 12, 2024 | thespectator.com | Simon Parkin |Bryan Appleyard |Paul F Kildea |Harry Cluff

Even before the 872-day long siege ended, both survivors and onlookers had already begun to refer to Leningrad — formerly and currently known as St. Petersburg — as a city of heroes. Tales of bravery and self-sacrifice were enshrined in memorials, histories and memoirs, which between 1945 and 1991 were published in the Soviet Union at an average rate of one per day.