Lead book review
Assassinations have an awkward tendency to backfire
A prime example – the murder of the SS officer Reinhard Heydrich in 1942 – may have been a technical success for SOE, but brutal reprisals made it an operational disaster
The crimes of Cecil Rhodes were every bit as sinister as those of the Nazis
Through bribery and ruthless exploitation, the unapologetic racist worked to unite Africa under British rule – with consequences that still haunt us today
Charles I at his absolutist worst
The months preceding the outbreak of civil war saw distrust of the King become widespread and a ‘new temper’ take hold
The race against Hitler to build the first nuclear bomb
The bomb was necessary to the Allies, but still horrified those responsible for its development – many of them refugees from Nazism
‘Too bohemian for Bournemouth’: the young Lawrence Durrell
Begged by his mother to go somewhere his behaviour wouldn’t ‘show so much’, the future novelist, aged 19, embarked on a lifetime of travel and rarely visited Britain again
Admirable in their awfulness – the siblings Gus and Gwen John
The self-styled Gypsy King and his reclusive sister seemed polar opposites – but both painters were selfish, obsessive monsters, according to Judith Mackrell
Charles Darwin’s contribution to Patagonia’s grim history
Characterising native tribes as ‘naked, painted, shivering, hideous savages’ proved no less calamitous for their survival as Argentina’s efforts to exterminate them, says Matthew Carr
‘I secreted a venom which spurted out indiscriminately’ – Muriel Spark
Frances Wilson’s mesmerising biography of one of the past century’s most singular writers is especially enlightening on the ‘domestic savagery’ often required of a great artist
The mystifying cult status of Gertrude Stein
The American author (of mostly unreadable books) was revered in 1920s Paris and became an international celebrity – though no one was quite sure why
Why shamanism shouldn’t be dismissed as superstitious savagery
Our need for belief in the supernatural gave rise to a demand for ‘mystical intermediaries’, or shamans, forging man’s earliest religion from which all others developed, argues Manvir Singh
Studying Dickens at university was once considered demeaning. Now it’s too demanding
Accessible, ‘relevant’ short stories are increasingly replacing the classics, as the monuments of Victorian literature defeat today’s undergraduates
The love that conquered every barrier – including the Iron Curtain
Iain Pears tells the dramatic story of how two art historians – one English, one Russian – met by chance in Venice and found they couldn’t live without each other
Time is running out for the world’s great rivers
Overfishing, industrial pollution and dams are squeezing life from once revered waterways that have sustained civilisations for centuries
The making of Van Gogh as an artist came at a terrible cost
In the manic years 1886-88 when he lived with his brother in Paris, Vincent worked at fever-pitch, exhausting himself and Theo and driving them both towards insanity
William Blake still weaves his mystic spell
Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’
Poor little rich girl: the extraordinary life of Yoko Ono
Her background was one of privilege and she married one of the most famous men of our time but the Japanese artist suffered her fair share of grief and misfortune
How Anne Frank’s photograph became as recognisable as the Mona Lisa
To date, the diary, pieced together from Anne’s notebooks, has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, with her story further explored in plays, films and novels
The dogged women on the trail of Dr Crippen
Had it not been for the persistence of Mrs Crippen’s friends at the Ladies’ Music Hall Guild, the notorious murderer might have escaped scot free
The Bloomsbury Group’s precarious paradise
The latest biography of Vanessa Bell explores her domestic and artistic radicalism but avoids the central contradiction of her life: deceiving her daughter Angelica for years over her parentage
A war of words: circulating forbidden literature behind the Iron Curtain
For decades, the CIA smuggled works by George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, Czeslaw Milosz and many others into the Soviet bloc in a battle for hearts, minds and intellects
The enlightened rule of the Empress Maria Theresa
‘She hates to see anyone put to death’, said one contemporary of the monarch who abolished torture and serfdom and pioneered the practice of open weekly audiences with the public
The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell
Peter Conrad reminds us how the skilled stage performer, always yearning for enchantment, even introduced a few disguised magic tricks into his fiction
In search of Pico della Mirandola, the quintessential Renaissance Man
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
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 importance of feeling shame
Stuart Jeffries 21 June 2025 9:00 am
Shamelessness is now ubiquitous in our narcissistic society. But to the ancient Greeks shame was a spur to honourable deeds and synonymous with modesty and respect