The Writing Cure

Ross Skelton’s memoir of his Antrim childhood and his unhappy relationship with his father casts light on some of the hidden complexities of Ulster society in the middle of the last century and is likely to prove a work of lasting value.

Staring Down the Barrel

Some critics have found the protagonist of Claire Messud’s new novel unlikeable, which is not just absurd but ironic, given that the novel’s premise is society’s expectations of women’s behaviour.

Birds, beasts and flowers

DH Lawrence’s poetry offers a record of the powerful current of physical pleasure, the elusive joy of witnessing that which is different, and the kind of opinionated prickliness when things are not what they seem to be or should be.

The Stilled World

Unsentimental, sparing and unspecific, the painter Patrick Pye has sought figurative images to represent symbolically “the archetypes of our humanity” depicted in an alternative universe where expiation has been achieved.

The Curator of Chiaroscuro

Sebastião Salgado’s latest book of photographs represents nature more as a New Age dream of harmony rather than the random mayhem and violent contingency it actually is.