Books
How kind is humankind?
Are humans by nature really more puppy than wolf? Oren Harman tests the science
My mother — as I remember her best
Nine cups of milky Nescafé Gold Blend a day; a low-tar cigarette smouldering; a hot-water-bottle always on her lap; the…
Gardening is the great panacea
Viewed from a purely private garden perspective, this has been a ver mirabilis. The blossom has been wonderful and long-lasting,…
Children go missing: the latest crime fiction reviewed
Hot on the heels of The Stranger, the Netflix series based on his novel but transplanted to the UK, Harlan…
The establishment was always covering up for Bob Boothby
Just after John Pearson finished writing The Profession of Violence, his celebrated biography of the Krays, both his and his…
Bullying on Twitter is nothing compared with what Charles II’s mistresses endured
Strolling through Whitehall Palace in the early years of the Restoration, Samuel Pepys was thrilled to spy a washing line…
The shock of discovering your ancestors were slave traders
If I had a slave owner in my family background I’d probably keep quiet about it. Richard Atkinson, in his…
The best way to cope with rejection is to write about it
With more than a dozen acclaimed novels to her name, not to mention short stories, poetry, a memoir and a…
The Plantagenet we always forget
Watching Heston Blumenthal arrange the infernal horror that is a lamprey’s head on a plate is one thing; seeing an…
Where did birds first learn to sing?
Fieldwork can move the most rigorous scientist to lyricism, as Mark Cocker discovers
The sorrows of young Hillary: Rodham, by Curtis Sittenfeld, reviewed
Question: which American president and first lady would you care to imagine having intercourse? If that provokes a shudder, be…
Disrupting the world — from a small bedroom in Hounslow
On 6 May 2010 the eurozone crisis was tearing through the continent. Greece was bankrupt, and it looked as though…
France will always have a love-hate relationship with its heroes
The French have a love-hate relationship with heroes. For the great 19th-century historian Jules Michelet, the French Revolution was supposed…
The genuine polymath is still one in a million
With unlimited information just a click away, everyone can pass as a polymath today, says Philip Hensher
Houdini looks bound to captivate us forever
Give thanks to the person who invented Venetian blinds, they say, or it would be curtains for us all. Curtains…
Vain, inbred and inept: how could the Habsburgs have survived so long?
One of the great mysteries of European history is how for the best part of 700 years a family who…
Victorian novels to enjoy in lockdown
It’s the perfect opportunity to crack open those classics of 19th-century fiction you’ve always been meaning to read, and I…
Taxonomy reaches celebrity heights
Heteropoda davidbowie is a species of huntsman spider. Though rare, it has been found in parts of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia…
A passionate wartime love story is rescued from oblivion
Once in a while, just at the right moment, a truly gorgeous real-life love story appears out of the blue,…
Did George Formby and Gracie Fields really help Britain out of the Depression?
Cinema history is a strange thing. A couple of months ago the Guardian began a series in which film critics…
The delicate balance between God and Caesar in modern Britain
At a well-reported political meeting at London’s Queen’s Hall during the first world war the preacher and suffragette Maude Royden…
From the wrestling ring to Plato’s Cave in one easy throw
One of the delights of going to stay with my grandparents in the 1970s was that my grandmother was a…
Homage to Lyra McKee — the journalist I miss most
In the two generations since Watergate, the image of the journalist has gone from that of plucky truth-seeker to sensationalist…
From blue to pink: Looking for Eliza, by Leaf Arbuthnot, reviewed
On the way back from my daily dawn march in the park, I often pass my neighbour, a distinguished gentleman…
Where are the Henry Kissingers when we need them?
It was not until I went to Harvard in 1988 to take a year out from the Foreign Office that…
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