Sex, death and parrots: Julian Barnes’s best fiction – ranked!

 

Julian Barnes by David Levine

Sex, death and parrots: Julian Barnes’s best fiction – ranked!

As the Booker prize-winning author prepares to publish his final novel at 80, we assess his finest work

John Self

Monday 19 January 2026

10 Duffy (1980)

Duffy is the first in a series of crime novels about a bisexual private eye that Barnes published under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh. It came out the same year as Barnes’s debut novel proper, Metroland, but where that took seven years to write, this took 10 days. Not that it shows: this “refreshingly nasty” (as Barnes’s friend Martin Amis put it) crime caper is beguilingly well written, with passages that display all of Barnes’s perception and wit. The plot of reverse blackmail and the shocking climax only add to the fun.
Sample line “Two in the morning is when sounds travel for ever, when a sticky window makes a soft squeak and three Panda cars hear it from miles away.”

 

‘The most dangerous man in America’: how Paul Robeson went from Hollywood to blacklist

The groundbreaking singer, actor and athlete became a victim of McCarthyism and saw his shining career destroyed and his legacy tarnished

Howard Bryant

Wed 21 Jan 2026 16.00 GMT

In August 1972, the front page of the New York Times arts section published a story titled, Time to Break the Silence on Paul Robeson? The legendary bass-baritone spent the first half of the 20th century as one of the greatest talents the US had ever produced, and its second, both in life and in death as an outcast, the greatest casualty of the second Red Scare period to which today’s current attacks on liberal and progressive politics draw comparison.

Rupert bare / How the Oz obscenity trial inspired a generation of protest art

 

Cover of the May 1970 issue of Oz, ‘the Schoolkids Issue’.Photograph: Lordprice Collection/Alamy

Rupert bare: how the Oz obscenity trial inspired a generation of protest art

This article is more than 4 years old

When a lewd cartoon of Rupert Bear landed the editors of the 60s counterculture paper in court, David Hockney, John Lennon, Robert Crumb and more made some of their most urgent art in response

Walker Mimms

Wed 4 Aug 2021 08.00 

“What do you suppose is the effect intended to be of equipping Rupert Bear with such a large sized organ?”

Fifty years ago, this was the question put to expert witness Edward de Bono, under pain of perjury. The six-week trial of Oz magazine at the Old Bailey was the longest obscenity trial in England’s history. It remains the most absurd.

Tributes have flooded in for designer Valentino, who has been hailed as an "eternal symbol of Italian high fashion".

 

Anne Hathaway y Valentino

Tributes pour in from leading politicians and actors for the designer - best known for creating his signature ‘Valentino red’

Monday 19 January 2026 23:27, UK

Tributes have flooded in for designer Valentino, who has been hailed as an "eternal symbol of Italian high fashion".

He died on Monday at his home in Rome, surrounded by his loved ones, his foundation announced today. He was 93.

Valentino / Women

 

Valentino
WOMEN

A look at some of the Italian fashion designer’s greatest moments, after his death at the age of 93

20 January 2026

Obituaries / Valentino

 

FASHION

Valentino obituary

Italian fashion designer who dressed some of the world’s most photographed women in glamorous, show-stopping gowns

Veronica Horwell

Tue 20 Jan 2026 

After Valentino Garavani retired in 2008 from a fashion world in which the meaning of luxury had changed, his half-century of couture creation was marked with exhibitions.

Georges Simenon / Soul Inspector

 

Soul Inspector

Georges Simenon pushed his characters to emotional extremes, exposing the criminal within, a shadowy core he believed we all share.

THREE BEDROOMS IN MANHATTAN (NEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS CLASSICS) BY GEORGES SIMENON.EDITED BY JOYCE CAROL OATES, MARC ROMANO, LAWRENCE G. BLOCHMAN. NYRB CLASSICS. PAPERBACK, 176 PAGES. $

In 1927, Georges Simenon, the phenomenally prolific Belgian author of crime novels, helped engineer a publicity stunt that sounds like a forecast of reality TV: He sat in a glass booth and wrote a novel in a week, in full view of the public. Simenon was all but unknown then, a journeyman author of indifferent pulp novelettes under a variety of pseudonyms. The feat made him famous, became the first thing many people knew about him. It was certainly the first thing I ever knew about him—I heard the story from my father, who at the time of the performance was growing up a few miles from Simenon’s hometown of Liège. No one who witnessed the feat forgot it. Pierre Assouline, in his 1997 biography of Simenon, quotes from no fewer than four memoirs by acquaintances of the novelist, recalling the surging crowds, the writer’s concentration, how he did not once look up from his typewriter . . .

Simenon's Last Case by Leslie Garis

 

Simenon's Last Case BIOGRAPHY The Belgian writer Georges Simenon is well known for mystery novels, but nothing could have prepared his readers for the devastating personal tragedy in his 'Intimate Memoires,' which is now being published in the United States. Leslie Garis New York Times Magazine April 22, 1984

"Between novels I have three or four weeks of exuberant life, and then, little by little, I have a feeling of emptiness. That's why I have had 33 homes in my life. Each time, it's the same. One day, I look around and I say, 'Why am I here?' And I don't know the answer. I am a stranger."

  

This article is more than 6 years old

Interview

Robert Crumb: 'I am no longer a slave to a raging libido'

The controversial artist talks about his latest exhibition, how his feelings on Trump have changed and why he has stopped drawing women

Nadja Sayej

Thursday 7 March 2019

Robert Crumb has always been known as the bad boy of the comics world. He has filled sketchbooks with smutty drawings of women, made offensive remarks and still manages to show at a top New York art gallery with fans waiting for an autograph.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb / 'He always laughs at my jokes and is my best fan'

 

Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky

 This article is more than 20 years old

'He always laughs at my jokes and is my best fan'

This article is more than 20 years old

Aline Kominsky-Crumb, wife and collaborator of controversial cartoonist Robert Crumb, answered your questions about life in France, on paper, and with Crumb

Eric: I'm a liberal American. Should I move to France?

Love, Eric

Aline Kominsky-Crumb: The quality of life is generally better here. People are less puritanical. But forget about getting things done quickly, and you'd better learn French.