Steve Donoghue’s posts from the original Open Letters Monthly Archives.
As Tennyson told us a century ago, Odysseus has become a name for wandering and a template for every storyteller since. In Zachery Mason’s evocative first novel, The Lost Books of the Odyssey, old myths find new words for the modern era; Steve Donoghue describes that newer world.
Read MoreMore than any other dynasty in history, the Tudors are ready for their close-up. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue leads us on a royal progress through film archives to access the heart and stomach of these undying superstars.
Read MoreAt a poetry reading on the Palatine 2,000 years ago, you’d have spent a week’s pay to hear him read. Today he’s unknown, except to our Steve Donoghue (and a few of our readers, no doubt). Here, after a long time gone, is the Roman poet Tibullus.
Read MoreN.T. Wright's book of theology earns its allusion to C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy. Steve Donoghue reviews.
Read MorePlotlessness, gimmickry, tin-eared dialogue, navel-gazing, heavy-handed symbolism: Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman lovingly abuse these and other writerly sins in How Not to Write a Novel, and Steve Donoghue joins in their Bronx cheer
Read MoreJane Boleyn took the witness stand and falsely testified that her brother committed incest with her sister-in-law, Anne Boleyn. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue tries to fathom the motives of such slander.
Read MoreSteve Donoghue exhumes the sprawling, illuminating writing of Gregory of Tours, the wrongly forgotten 12th-century saint, historian, and natural-born raconteur
Read MoreDoes Peter Leonard's thriller "Quiver" stand up to the work of his famous father Elmore?
Read MoreJonathan Coe's The Rain Before it Falls tells the multigenerational tale of women from World War II to the present era
Read MoreThe premise of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is that all of us are a lot more irrational a lot more often than we thought; Steve Donoghue tries to determine if the inmates really are running the asylum
Read MoreHenry Howard, the Earl of Surrey: commander, courtier, poet. In this installment of his “Year with the Tudors,” Steve Donoghue tells the story of how such an extraordinary young man fell foul of Henry VIII.
Read MoreIn this regular feature, Steve Donoghue dives deep into the work of James Russell Lowell, whose splendid writing lurks in the basins of bookstore bargain carts, too often passed over for the smaller fry.
Read MoreDaniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought turns on the 1828 presidential race between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, a tawdry epic of mudslinging the likes of which would not be seen until our own era. Steve Donoghue revisits how it all, alas, began.
Read MoreSteve Donoghue continues his “Year with the Tudors” with this look at Chris Skidmore’s biography of Edward VI, the ill-starred son of Henry VIII who might have been the most formidable Tudor monarch of all.
Read MoreIn this regular feature, Steve Donoghue celebrates the books of the 17th-Century physician Nicholas Culpeper, whose medicine may be archaic but whose wisdom and literary merit are by no means obsolete.
Read MoreAs Steve Donoghue writes, the epitome of what a monarch can be was embodied in the massive form of Henry VIII, and not a year passes without another biographer struggling to tackle the man and his legacy. 2007 was no different….
Read MoreIn our regular feature, Steve Donoghue revisits Giovanni Guareschi’s Little World of Don Camillo, an eternally comforting fictional oasis set in the heart of the Cold War.
Read MoreThere was no popular conception of the serial killer in Victorian England in 1888. Jack the Ripper was self-made man, and, as Steve Donoghue writes, no one knows who he was.
Read MoreWith so many versions of War and Peace to choose from, is there anything that translators can do to set themselves apart? Yes, says Steve Donoghue, they can make old mistakes.
Read MoreFed up with the abuses of book reviewers, Gail Pool in her book Faint Praise advises editors to supply freelancers with a list of writing guidelines they would have to sign and abide by. Steve Donoghue isn’t quite ready to put his name on the dotted line.
Read MoreThis is a place for all of my writing about books.