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Hermione Lee

June 2023

  • Virginia Woolf in London in 1939.

    Book of the day
    The Diary of Virginia Woolf review – a book for the ages

    Woolf’s epic and unmatchable record of her life, times and writing process

February 2019

  • Benjamin Lee

    Other lives
    Benjamin Lee obituary

    Other lives: Dedicated doctor and accomplished musician

May 2018

  • Philip Roth

    'An astonishing force field': Philip Roth, as remembered by authors and friends

    Friends and fans including writers Jonathan Safran Foer and Joyce Carol Oates, and his long-term reader Hermione Lee pay tribute to ‘a towering figure’ of literature

July 2017

  • Upholding standards … Graham Swift, who has won the Hawthornden prize for his post-first-world-war novel Mothering Sunday.

    Books blog
    Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday wins fiction’s most secretive prize

    The writer’s 10th novel has won the £15,000 Hawthornden prize, sponsored by arts patron Drue Heinz

January 2015

  • Detail from a 1942 Bert Hardy photograph of women bidding farewell to their loved ones at Paddington station.

    Book of the week
    The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan review – light on a dark world

    Hermione Lee: Like its two main characters, this impressive novel has a double life, moving with imaginative daring between war and art, photography and fiction, and memory and secrets

September 2012

  • Nicole Kidman as Isabel Archer

    Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra – review

    Hermione Lee welcomes the biography of a novel that changed literature

August 2012

  • Totes Meer by Paul Nash

    Book of the week
    Toby's Room by Pat Barker – review

    What role should art play in conflict? Hermione Lee acclaims Pat Barker's unflinching exploration

July 2012

  • Woman reading on a shingle beach

    Book of the week
    The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack – review

    A history of women's reading, and those who opposed it, intrigues Hermione Lee

October 2011

  • Anita Brookner, novelist

    A look back
    From the archive, 21 October 1984: Why should the Booker play safe?

    Originally published in the Observer on 21 October 1984: Hermione Lee congratulates Anita Brookner on winning the prize, but laments the judges' lack of adventure

May 2011

  • Illustration by Clifford Harper

    The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright – review

    Anne Enright's novel of love and betrayal is set in Ireland's boom years

February 2011

  • a field in a village near Alexandria

    Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar – review

  • Katherine Mansfield

    Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller by Kathleen Jones - review

January 2011

  • ARCHITECTURAL STOCK Museum

    By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham - review

    Michael Cunningham's gallery owner longs for some adventure in his life. By Hermione Lee

October 2010

  • The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín – Review

    Hermione Lee finds Colm Tóibín reaching beyond his alienated narrators

April 2010

  • Penelope Fitzgerald

    From the margins: Hermione Lee on Penelope Fitzgerald

    Since her death ten years ago this month, Penelope Fitzgerald's reputation has grown steadily. Once dismissed as a minor lady writer, she is now recognised as one of the finest British novelists of the last century. Her biographer Hermione Lee has been granted access to her manuscripts, letters and, best of all, her library of books with their many personal annotations

December 2009

  • Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith and Concerning EM Forster by Frank Kermode

    Hermione Lee admires the empathetic strain in two discussions of the novel

August 2008

  • Thinking about the world

    Review: The Pages by Murray Bail
    Hermione Lee finds the story of an Australian 'philosopher' brought alive by brilliant writing

June 2008

  • The wounded heart of Europe

    Review: Disguise by Hugo Hamilton
    Hermione Lee finds a haunting book about the uncertainty of identity oddly consoling

March 2008

  • Pawed, used, loved and lonely

    Anne Enright's new stories take Hermione Lee to sad, stifling places - but make her laugh too

October 2007

  • An audience with Philip Roth

    Since his debut in The Ghost Writer in 1979, Nathan Zuckerman has become Roth's most celebrated alter ego. To mark the publication of Exit Ghost, in which Zuckerman takes his final bow, America's foremost novelist talks to Hermione Lee about his life and work.

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