Lead book review
A five-ring fiasco
The ambitions of the founding father of the modern Olympic Games, the Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin — that they…
In the steppes of the Golden Horde
When I first visited the complex of Buddhist cave grottoes, dating from the fifth to the 14th century, at Bezekilk…
Russia’s dumping ground
Almost as soon as Siberia was first colonised by Cossack conquistadors in the 17th century, it became a place of…
A familiar life (revisited)
A Life Revisited, as the modest, almost nervous, title suggests, mainly concerns Evelyn Waugh’s life with comments on but no…
Food for thought
Elisabeth Luard has a fascinating and rich subject in the relationship between food and place. Humans eat differently according to…
The laureate of repression
In 1927, while delivering the lectures that would later be published as Aspects of the Novel, E.M. Forster made a…
Misadventures in Libya
If photographs of ‘the deal in the desert’ made you queasy — you remember, Tony Blair and Muammar Gaddafi shaking…
Cervantes the seer
William Egginton opens his book with a novelistic reimagining: here’s Miguel de Cervantes, a toothless old geezer of nearly 60,…
Wise women in wikuoms
You can’t see the wood for the trees in Annie Proulx’s epic novel of logging and deforestation in North America, says Philip Hensher
Principles of heredity
A clear, accurate, up-to-date pop science book on genetics would have been most welcome, says Stuart Ritchie. Sadly, this isn’t it
Laws that changed the world
Prosecution for genocide or crimes against humanity is now a given in international law. But before the Nuremberg Trials, these two groundbreaking notions didn’t exist. Daniel Hahn describes their origins and inspiration
Throned on her hundred isles
It took the madness of genius to build such a wonderful impossibility. Patrick Marnham reviews a delightful new literary guide to Venice
Black mischief among the Medicis
The life – and violent death – of a very unusual Renaissance prince has Alex von Tunzelmann enthralled
The spaces in between
An unfinished painting can provide a startling glimpse of the artist at work. But the common tendency to prefer it to a finished work is being taken to extremes, says Philip Hensher
A mirror to the world
The best new books celebrating Shakespeare’s centenary are full of enthusiasm and insight — but none plucks out the heart of his mystery, says Daniel Swift
The tragedy of Arabia
T.E. Lawrence is seen as a ‘metaphor for imperialism, violence and betrayal’ in the Middle East. But woeful Arab leadership has also been to blame for the region’s problems, says Justin Marozzi
An incurable Romantic
Frances Wilson’s biography of Thomas De Quincey, the mischievous, elusive ‘Pope of Opium’, makes for addictive reading, says Hermione Eyre
‘A good boy trying to be bad’
Robert Mapplethorpe made his reputation as a photographer in the period between the 1969 gay-bashing raid at the Stonewall Inn…
‘Help the British anyhow’
The sacrifices made by India on the Allies’ behalf in the second world war would profoundly affect the country’s future for better or worse, says Philip Hensher
A gift from beyond the grave
Andrew Motion finds a touching parallel between Virgil’s unfinished Aeneid and Seamus Heaney’s barely finished translation of Book VI
Fighting for progress
The 17th century scores highly — especially England’s part in it — in A.C. Grayling’s ‘points system’ of history. If only the study of the past were that simple, says Ruth Scurr
‘Excess is obnoxious’
Justin Marozzi on the bitter irony of Aleppo’s ancient motto
‘Existentialism? I don’t know what it is’
We all carried their philosophy around in our youth, says Philip Hensher. But did anyone — including the existentialists themselves — really understand it?
Viewing the view
It’s not all picnics and cowslips. You need sense as well as sensibility to appreciate a landscape, says Mary Keen
A box of delights
Juliet Nicolson examines women’s lives and changing fashions through a rich hoard of buttons for all occasions
