Tideland

Philip French: Terry Gilliam's deeply disappointing Tideland looks at the world through the eyes of a pre-teenager

Innocence and experience

Nicholas Lezard applauds Hans-Georg Behr's powerful and gripping tale about growing up among the Nazis, Almost a Childhood.

The late bloomer

Success came late to Mary Wesley. Now, in Patrick Marnham's biography Wild Mary, she has a proper memorial, says Joanna Briscoe.

Sweet fantasies

Michèle Roberts savours novelist Amélie Nothomb's memories of her peripatetic childhood, The Life of Hunger.

This reading list fails the test

John Sutherland: Anyone looking thoughtfully at the curriculum prescribed by Alan Johnson's Department for Education and Skills will be inclined to sum it up in one phrase: "Conservative".

Always from the heart

Whether it was his latest conquest or a building that demanded to be saved, John Betjeman was always driven by passion, as an invaluable reissue of his letters edited by his daughter makes clear. Charles Sumarez Smith finds out more.

About a Boy

Compassion is the main mood of Peter Ames Carlin's diligently researched and even-handed tome on the life of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson, says Campbell Stevenson.

Malice aforethought

Hitler, Jews, Venice, fellow historians - there wasn't anybody or anything that wasn't scorned in Hugh Trevor-Roper's letters, says Laura Cumming.

Love and war

Natasha Walter is moved by the honesty and passion of a great correspondent in The Letters of Martha Gellhorn.

In the shadow of a genius

Michael Dibdin finds much to admire in Rodney Bolt's biography of Mozart's librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte.