Books
Could the giant panda be real?
Even in the past century the animal was considered so exotic that many doubted its very existence
Highs and lows: The Boys, by Leo Robson, reviewed
Mourning the loss of their parents, two brothers succumb to listlessness and lethargy in a sweltering London gripped by Olympic fever
Tim Franks goes in search of what it means to be Jewish
In a thought-provoking family history, the BBC journalist addresses questions of identity – and to what extent we are products of our forebears
Putin’s stranglehold on the Russian press
Two former Izvestiya journalists describe how all but the bravest in the media have crumpled under pressure to toe the Putinist line
The key to Giorgia Meloni’s resounding success
The once sullen, bullied girl, abandoned by her father as a baby, found iron in her soul and refused to become a victim
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
What a carve up! The British flair for disastrous partition
The ‘Great Partition’ of India in 1947 led to the wider division of Britain’s ‘empire within an empire’ – and to most of the problems plaguing southern Asia today
The wolf as symbol of European anxieties
This ‘amoral outcast’ and its thieving trickery is now widely equated with the economic migrant, slipping across borders unnoticed and threatening the status quo
A season of strangeness: The Hounding, by Xenobe Purvis, reviewed
Little Nettlebed is in the grip of serious drought, and the angry villagers are looking for scapegoats in this irresistible page-turner set in 18th-century Oxfordshire
A life among movie stars can damage your health
So Dustin Hoffman tells the teenage Matthew Specktor as they share cigarette breaks at CAA, the Los Angeles talent agency they both frequent
Being stalked by a murderer was just one of life’s problems – Sarah Vine
At times one cannot believe what the Gove family endured during frontline government service, and politics gets much of the blame as Vine looks back over the wreckage
What was millennial girl power really about?
In the 1990s and early 2000s, ‘empowerment’ was a girl’s watchword. But she was empowered primarily to be pleasing to men and, above all, never grow up
The Spectator letter that marked a turning point in gay history
Signing his real name (a brave decision for a homosexual in 1960), Roger Butler sparked a good deal of discussion on a ‘shunned topic’, which eventually led to a change in the law
The rose-tinted view of female friendship shatters
Are women’s relationships with each other today more brittle and less supportive than in the past?
Haunted by my great-grandfather’s second wife – by Alice Mah
An academic specialising in ecology, Mah traces her constant anxiety about the world to a ghostly Chinese forebear
The bloodstained origins of the Italian Renaissance
Prolonged warfare between city states was conducted largely by mercenaries, whose accrued fortunes translated into social status through patronage of the arts
North and South America have always been interdependent
It is impossible to fully understand one without the other, says Greg Grandin. Despite their numerous differences, their relationship is fundamentally symbiotic
The stigma still surrounding leprosy
Though long curable, the disease remains endemic in India, Mozambique and Brazil, with lack of medical funding leaving lepers among the world’s most marginalised people
A small world: Shibboleth, by Thomas Peermohamed Lambert, reviewed
A satire on Oxford university life points up ideological tensions, the pettiness of college politics and the patronising ways of the young and privileged
The secret child: Love Forms, by Claire Adam, reviewed
An anguished Trinidadian divorcée decides after 40 years to search for the daughter she was forced as a teenager to give up for adoption
Comfort reading for the interwar years
The Book Society’s recommendations in the 1930s included novels by Dorothy Whipple, E.M. Delafield, C.S. Forester and A.J Cronin, with popular history from Arthur Bryant
Instantly captivating: the mysterious harmonies of Erik Satie
The French composer’s aesthetic was so influential that he gave us the sound of the contemporary world, says Ian Penman
Is nothing private anymore?
We all need a place away from public view – but we should also remind ourselves why our privacy has been so invaded
‘Genius’ is a dangerously misused word
It is best applied not to individuals but to teams or milieux, says Helen Lewis. The idea that a few special people are fundamentally more gifted than their peers is not only corrosive but inaccurate
