Hooked for life Will Millard’s fishing memoir, The Old Man and the Sand Eel, reminds Nicholas Shakespeare inevitably of stories of ‘Papa’ read more in The Spectator

The old man and the siren For the last decade of his life, the sozzled Hemingway was in thrall to an Italian 30 years his junior, padding around after her like a puppy read more in The Spectator

Divinely decadent Mary S. Lovell’s account the sad, seedy socialites of the Côte d’Azur is as shallow as the poolside tittle-tattle it salivates over read more in The Spectator

Sun, sea and spooks Greene’s brother, as well as Agent Garbo, provided comic inspiration for the vacuum-cleaner salesman recruited by SIS in Our Man in Havana read more in The Spectator