Chronicler of the making of her husband’s Apocalypse Now whose footage and recordings were the basis for a documentary and book
March 2024
One Another by Gail Jones review – a writer’s obsession with Joseph Conrad
Jones’s latest novel is complex and delicate, charting echoes in the lives of a PhD student in 90s Cambridge and the Heart of Darkness author, who she is fascinated by
May 2021
Top 10s
Top 10 books about duels
Guardian 200
Marxists, feminists – and Olympians: the most dazzling Guardian writers over 200 years
April 2021
The hottest literary travel destinations (to visit when lockdown ends)
From George Orwell’s Isle of Jura to Willa Cather’s Nebraskan frontier … with travel restricted to the imagination, Henry Eliot picks the most memorable and beautiful literary locations
October 2020
African Apocalypse review – startling journey into Niger's heart of darkness
British-Nigerian poet Femi Nylander uncovers the atrocities of a rogue French officer whose impact is still being felt today
July 2020
Ignore the relentlessly cheery and take comfort in something from the dark side
Vanessa Thorpe
The times demand indulging in a spot of Pinter or Strauss, not listening to ministers insisting that all is well
June 2020
Top 10s
Top 10 four-dimensional novels
A conceptual adventure first embarked on in the 19th century has inspired daring fiction from authors including HG Wells, Kurt Vonnegut and Madeleine L’Engle
February 2020
Other lives
Paul Kirschner obituary
Other lives: Academic and expert on the works of the writer Joseph Conrad
June 2019
Top 10s
Top 10 books about the River Thames
Sven Lindqvist obituary
April 2019
Heart of Darkness review – challenging reconstruction of Conrad
Imitating the Dog interrogate their own staging of the controversial novella as well as its themes
March 2019
The Ridiculous Darkness review – Conrad, Coppola and the 'white saviour' complex
A story from a Somali pirate kicks off this outlandish comic critique of Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now
December 2018
Defacing Heart of Darkness: new plays tear down Conrad's colonialist tale
In two contrasting stagings of the novel, one renders it ridiculous while the other confronts the debate head on
October 2018
Orson Welles' jungle book, Bilbo on mushrooms: the great unmade movies
Books that made me
Javier Marías: ‘I gave up on Karl Ove Knausgaard after 300 pages’
February 2018
Does it matter if authors make up their memoirs?
Jerome Boyd Maunsell
Joseph Conrad invented a boat, HG Wells omitted his affairs. But does it matter if this imaginative licence reveals a different kind of truth, asks Jerome Boyd Maunsell
January 2018
Top 10s
Top 10 books about time
Book of the day
The Dawn Watch review – ‘redefines how we see Joseph Conrad’
November 2017
Critical eye
Reviews roundup: Sugar Money; The Dawn Watch; When They Go Low, We Go High
What the critics thought of Sugar Money by Jane Harris; The Dawn Watch by Maya Jasanoff; and When They Go Low, We Go High by Philip Collins
