Lead book review
Translating Proust wasn’t all
Sam Leith is astonished by how much the multi-talented Charles Scott Moncrieff achieved in his short lifetime
Disciplined exoticism
Lewis Jones on Ian Fleming’s Jamaican retreat and the inspiration it provided for the Bond novels
Taking no prisoners
The life of Kaiser Wilhelm II is also a guide to how to ruin a country, says Philip Mansel
Brushes with fame
Philip Hensher on the precarious fortunes of even the most gifted 19th-century artists
The rhythm of life
Sam Leith finds much to like in a companion to musical films, and concludes that they matter very much – to the author anyway
Goodbye to all that
In the latest – and best – of the books on the end of the USSR, Victor Sebestyen finds that the only good thing about the Soviet empire was the manner of its passing
The tyrant and the cloud-dweller
The banning of Dr Zhivago in the Soviet Union had unfortunate consequences for other fine 20th-century Russian novels, says Robert Chandler
A rake’s progress
Philip Hensher on the scandalous 17th-century courtier whose hellfire reputation has overshadowed his fine satirical poetry
Cannon and ball
David Crane on an old soldier’s account of a 200-year-old battle that will never fade away
The incredible journey
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
Fabled splendours
Peter Parker on the age-old allure of the Indian subcontinent
City of a thousand and one nights
Ali A. Allawi on the fluctuating fortunes of Iraq’s fabled capital
Irresistible zing and pizzazz
Philip Hensher on the tragically short life of the ebullient and multi-talented musician, Constant Lambert
A guide to life
Adam Nicolson plunges into Homer’s epic poetry and finds it inexhaustible. Sam Leith feels a touch of envy
God save England
The patriotism of the Great War’s finest poets was neither narrow nor triumphalist but reflected an intense devotion to an endangered country and to a way of life worth dying for, says David Crane
The very odd couple
Ian Thomson on a miserable mismatch that became the talk of Buenos Aires in the Sixties
Up close and personal
In recycling his most intimate encounters as fiction – including amazing feats of promiscuity in small-town New England – John Updike drew unashamedly on his own experiences for inspiration, says Philip Hensher
Politics as Victorian melodrama
The egotistical Churchill may have viewed the second world war as pure theatre, but that was exactly what was needed at the time, says Sam Leith
Power to the people
Alan Johnson cannot accept that the best days of the British working class are over
The lesser evil
The argument that mankind’s innate violence can only be contained by force of arms may make for a neat paradox, but it fails to convince David Crane
A champion of liberal reform
Roy Jenkins may have been snobbish and self-indulgent, but he was also a visionary and man of principle who would have made a good prime minister, says Philip Ziegler
‘Tell it not in the future’
Sam Leith finds the most sacred site of Ancient Greece still a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma
Delhi’s underbelly
India’s vast polluted capital, where brutality, corruption and ruthless self-seeking are endemic, could be the blueprint of the future, says Peter Parker
The right sort of chap
Kim Philby’s treachery escaped detection for so long through the stupidity and snobbery of the old-boy network surrounding him, says Philip Hensher
From post office girl to woman of letters
Melanie McDonagh on Flora Thompson, whose revealing account of rural Oxfordshire life at the turn of the 19th century became a literary classic
