If Philip Hensher's hefty new novel only equalled the sum of its parts, it would still be a cause for celebration. As it is, the five more or less discrete narratives, while varying in standard from ...

Philip Hensher's The Emperor Waltz is as joyful as its musical namesake Credit: Photo: Geraint Lewis / Rex Features The Emperor Waltz was composed by Strauss in 1889 as a symbolic toast to friendship, ...

Hensher's foray into the portmanteau novel is full of character and colour – but it's a riddle of a book Portmanteau novels – you know the type, tales made up of obscurely linked episodes that skip ...

Film is a costumer laid 'in the days' (sic) of Emperor Franz Joseph, and is played to the hilt by Crosby, Joan Fontaine and their supporting cast. Picture has a free-and-easy air that perfectly ...

An ambitious and extraordinary ninth novel that is haunted by “a familiar piece of music, the old-fashioned sound an orchestra might make for rich ladies and gentlemen to dance to, in the ...

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. Philip Hensher’s 10th novel, The Emperor Waltz, isn’t really just one novel at all. It’s composed of three distinct ...

Philip Hensher defies categorisation because just when you think you've placed him he goes sideways or turns everything on its head. You need only pick up an early novel such as Pleasured to realise ...

Philip Hensher's most ambitious novel to date, The Emperor Waltz, draws together several narrative strands, each telling the story of a group of outsiders and celebrating their difference from society ...

Can a master of sauerbraten pull off a linzer torte? Not really, but it’s great fun to watch The Emperor Waltz writer-director Billy Wilder (with scripting partner Charles Brackett) try his hand at an ...