Lead book review
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
A bold artistic vision
Sam Leith on the exasperating, charismatic painter who floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee
Soldier, statesman, sovereign
Alan Rush admires the humane, enlightened Faisal I, who fought with T.E. Lawrence and devoted his life to Arab rights, independence and unity
The great land grab
The highly profitable — and intrinsically selfish — system of land ownership that replaced medieval feudal tenure had profound moral consequences that continue to this day, says John Adamson
The lure of Europe
A tour of the Continent was a prerequisite for young Jacobean noblemen training for statesmanship — provided they resisted its corrupting influence, says Blair Worden
Words, words, words
Sam Leith reviews the reviews of David Lodge — and wonders where it will all end
Playing fast and loose
Simon Blow recalls the wealth, recklessness and beauty of his family’s better days
‘The most important Jewish writer since Kafka’
Ian Thomson on the turbulent life of Clarice Lispector
Eat, drink and be merry…
... for tomorrow traditional seasonal rituals may just be ghostly memories of a vanished world, says Melanie McDonagh
Aesthete and huckster
Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat
Not dynamite, more blancmange
Debunking reputations is now out of fashion, says Philip Hensher, and Craig Raine should give it up — especially as he always misses the point
In the steppes of a warlord
Joanna Kavenna is impressed by one man’s 6,000-mile ride through some of the loneliest regions on earth
