Lead book review
Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong
The 17th-century Elector of Saxony was notoriously vain and incompetent, and his reckless bid for the Polish crown was disastrous for all concerned
A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin
The SAS explode from the shadows in six days that shook Britain
The siege of the Iranian embassy in London in the spring of 1980 achieved nothing for the terrorists. But the previously reclusive elite army unit soon became the stuff of legend
From ugly duckling into swan – the remarkable transformation of Pamela Digby
The plump teenager who married Randolph Churchill soon turned herself into a ravishing beauty – to become the 20th century’s most influential seductress
The great French painter who had no time for France
Describing himself as the ‘savage from Peru’, Paul Gauguin avoided French society when he could, returning to Polynesia in 1895, where he spent his final years on the island of Hiva Oa
The trivial details about royalty are what really fascinate us
Craig Brown’s focus on specifics that other biographers would consider beneath them brings rich rewards
Introducing Tchaikovsky the merry scamp
Rescuing the composer from his tortured image, Simon Morrison presents him as a sort of Till Eulenspiegel character, laughing and pranking his way through life
Saved from certain death at Auschwitz – by playing the cello
Exploring the relationship between the cello and its player, Kate Kennedy describes how Anita Lasker-Wallfisch’s musical gift enabled her to survive not just one but two Nazi death camps
A marriage of radical minds: the creative partnership of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
Fanny’s influence on her husband’s work was considerable, perhaps especially in the fine late novellas, rich in ironies about imperialism and the exploitation of South Sea islanders
How the myth of Paris liberating itself was born
When De Gaulle persuaded Eisenhower to allow the French 2nd armoured division to lead a diversion into the city on 25 August 1944, it was his own political future he was thinking of
The new alliances dedicated to destroying democracy
Despite their diverse ideologies, autocracies in China, Iran, Russia and Latin America are increasingly collaborating to sabotage a rules-based international order
A David and Goliath battle involving a billion-dollar pornography website
Laila Mickelwait appears to wage a one-woman crusade to shut down a major distributor of rape and child abuse videos
Dedicated to debauchery: the life of Thom Gunn
Even the most liberal-minded reader might be surprised by the amount of crack cocaine, LSD, alcohol and casual sex the poet indulged over the course of 50 years
Islands of inspiration: a poet’s life on Shetland
Jen Hadfield is not only spellbound by the moods of the ocean and the hectic weather but by the Shaetlan dialect itself – which ‘struck me immediately as a poetic language’
Shalom Auslander vents his disgust – on his ‘grotesque, vile, foul, ignominious self’
Long derided as ‘feh’ by his Orthodox parents, the American writer admits to being his own hanging judge
Paris is perhaps the greatest character in Balzac’s Human Comedy
The drama of the street is a constant theme, though Balzac himself took most pleasure in the city’s ‘gloomy passages and silent cul-de-sacs between midnight and two in the morning’
A long goodbye to Berlin
Christopher Isherwood’s experiences as a young man in Weimar Germany would be reworked in his autofiction for the rest of his life
Those magnificent men and their stargazing machines
Violet Moller focuses on three 16th-century‘heroes of science’, John Dee, Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and their great libraries and observatories
The wry humour of Franz Kafka
A masterly new translation of his Diaries reminds us that Kafka wasn’t solely the prophet of a century of dehumanisation
The joy of hanging out with artists
Lynn Barber finds painters and sculptors easily the most congenial people to interview - despite having received a death threat from the Chapman brothers
‘There are an awful lot of my paintings I don’t like,’ admitted Francis Bacon
While waspishly dismissive of many of the 20th century’s greatest artists, Bacon was also critical of his own work, in conversation with David Sylvester
The Berkeley scandal of 1681 transfixed London society – and Aphra Behn soon capitalised on it
In The Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister, often called the ‘first English novel’, Behn successfully milked the affair for all it was worth
The identical twins who captivated literary London
Intelligent and beautiful, Celia and Mamaine Paget were loved by some of the greatest writers of the interwar years, but remained uniquely devoted to each other
To Salman Rushdie, a dream before his attempted murder ‘felt like a premonition’
Though premonitions are not things he believes in, Rushdie notes the many spooky coincidences surrounding the attack – which he describes in gripping, terrifying detail
What’s really behind the Tories’ present woes?
Philip Hensher 25 May 2024 9:00 am
Geoffrey Wheatcroft identifies two root causes: the disastrous revision of the leadership election procedure, and David Cameron’s turn to the referendum as a device to govern