Lead book review

In search of Pico della Mirandola, the quintessential Renaissance Man

15 February 2025 9:00 am

Though the scholar himself remains an enigma, his theories about language as a portal to the divine are explored in depth by Edward Wilson-Lee

The pointlessness of the German Peasants’ War – except in Marxist ideology

8 February 2025 9:00 am

The short-lived 16th-century revolt resolved absolutely nothing, but it loomed large in Engels’s thought and in the official DDR interpretation of history

The international criminal justice system was prejudiced from the start

1 February 2025 9:00 am

Double standards have existed since its foundation in 1945, with the most powerful nations determining who should be held accountable for war crimes

For all its fame, the Great Siege of Malta made no difference to the course of history

25 January 2025 9:00 am

The victorious Hospitallers soon subsided into genteel irrelevance, while the Ottomans remained a formidable Mediterranean power for centuries to come

Red-letter days for Gilbert & George

18 January 2025 9:00 am

After a successful show in Moscow in 1990, the odd couple went on to even greater triumph in China three years later, as the long-suffering curator of both exhibitions describes

Once upon a time in Germany: the Grimms’ legacy of revenge and gory redemption

11 January 2025 9:00 am

The Household Tales only attained their standing after the brothers’ death, with the unification of Germany and the decades of nationalism that led to catastrophe

Emilie du Châtelet – a lone voice among Enlightenment thinkers

4 January 2025 9:00 am

The brilliant physicist’s warning to her contemporaries not to carry respect for great men to the point of idolatry fell on deaf ears

Celebrating Miss Marple, expert on the wickedness of village life

14 December 2024 9:00 am

The elderly spinster with a fine sense of evil was a creation Agatha Christie never tired of – unlike the ‘tiresome, egocentric’ Hercule Poirot

The mythic mishmash of Wagner’s Ring

7 December 2024 9:00 am

Its towering themes of gods, giants, dragons and magic were not purely Germanic in origin, whatever fever-dream they later conjured in Hitler’s brain

Besieged Odesa is still caught in a conflict of identities

30 November 2024 9:00 am

Older citizens have identified with Russia all their lives – and Russian is still commonly spoken everywhere. But young Odesans are now using more Ukrainian as a symbol of resistance

Is it time for Jordan Peterson to declare his spiritual allegiance?

23 November 2024 9:00 am

In an outstanding study of the Old Testament, Peterson teases out the inner meaning of one story after another. But though in effect signed up to Christian metaphysics, his beliefs are a mystery

Reading the classics should be a joy, not a duty

16 November 2024 9:00 am

Edwin Frank’s survey of 20th-century fiction stresses the po-faced seriousness of the great novel. But many masterpieces revel in the ridiculous – or are about nothing at all

Books of the Year II

9 November 2024 9:00 am

Contributors include: Peter Parker, Daniel Swift, Stephen Bayley, Justin Marozzi, Andrea Wulf, Hilary Spurling, Boyd Tonkin and Graham Robb

Books of the Year I

2 November 2024 9:00 am

Our regular reviewers choose the books they have most enjoyed reading in 2024

Is it up to pop stars to save the planet now?

26 October 2024 9:00 am

‘Walking by the banks of the Chao Praya on a breezy evening after a day of intense heat,’ writes Sunil…

The demonising of homosexuals in postwar Britain

19 October 2024 9:00 am

The tabloids in particular stirred up fear and distrust with lurid stories of orgies, prostitution, drug-taking, political corruption, sinister concealment and susceptibility to blackmail

Politics as Ripping Yarns: the breathless brio of Boris Johnson’s memoir

12 October 2024 9:00 am

Like a cross between Aeneas and Biggles, our intrepid hero travels the world, endures a thousand ordeals and makes himself father of the world’s greatest city

Few rulers can have rejoiced in a less appropriate sobriquet than Augustus the Strong

5 October 2024 9:00 am

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

28 September 2024 9:00 am

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

21 September 2024 9:00 am

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

14 September 2024 9:00 am

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

7 September 2024 9:00 am

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

31 August 2024 9:00 am

Craig Brown’s focus on specifics that other biographers would consider beneath them brings rich rewards

Introducing Tchaikovsky the merry scamp

24 August 2024 9:00 am

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

17 August 2024 9:00 am

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