Books
A Sisyphean task
In homage to St Magnus, the stonemason Beatrice Searle carries a heavy load from Orkney to Trondheim, following an ancient pilgrims’ way
The road from Rhodes
Stella Levi, an Auschwitz survivor, recalls the vibrant, long-established Jewish community that existed in the Dodecanese before the Nazi deportations in 1944
Nursing grievances
When Florence Nightingale was joined in Scutari by groups of volunteer nuns, tensions among them soon imperilled the entire female nursing experiment
Who could resist Elmo?
In 1993, Natasha Lance Rogoff was tasked with introducing the American puppets to Russia in the hope of cultivating peace, love and understanding
The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican
Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty’s thrilling mission to save the lives of 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers in Nazi-occupied Rome doesn’t quite get the memorial it deserves
The Roman circus
Brutality might be expected of a people who fed each other to lions – but it extended even to the elephants the Romans regarded as soulmates
A playful provocateur
The world-class musician describes his early desire to shock, his delight in the sensual, his life-changing relationship with Catholicism and, finally, his debut at Carnegie Hall
One awful year
A group of privileged teenagers at Buckley School, Los Angeles medicate themselves on champagne, cocaine and mindless sex – until something awful happens
Life with Mother
The flamboyant hostess and ‘psychic’ interior decorator does seem like a comic creation – but she was real enough, and perhaps madder than Ludwig Bemelmans lets on
Misogyny through the ages
The lovable rounded character of The Canterbury Tales has been ridiculed over the centuries for her sexual appetites, completely subverting Chaucer’s focus
Sharp practice
Thackeray’s amoral schemer is recast as a ruthless tabloid journalist, splashing gossip, hacking phones and pursuing personal vendettas
The best of liberal thought
Shocked by the authoritarianism of Cuba and the USSR, the Peruvian writer turned his back on communism in the 1960s, influenced by seven liberal European thinkers
Castles in the air
He certainly had delusions of grandeur, but his ambition to educate a people newly emerged from slavery showed a true visionary spirit
Day of vengeance
A festive gathering in the depths of rural France is fatally disrupted by a trio of sinister strangers
Allies, not friends
The initial reluctance of Britain, France, Poland and the US to share intelligence allowed the Nazis to hone their deception skills to early advantage
All the world is here
Justin Marozzi celebrates the medieval naturalist Zakariyya Qazwini and his breathtaking bid to capture the marvels of creation
The grammar schools debate
Peter Hitchens is in no doubt that it was. But a dominant, self-perpetuating meritocratic elite, all head and no heart, might also have presented problems
Flights of imagination
Iwan Rhys Morus describes how novelists’ futuristic visions began to be realised by engineers – though the course of invention is more random than he imagines
Cakes and ale
There has never been a golden age or even a very stable one, says Diane Purkiss, in a serious consideration of how English food has changed over time
Women of no importance
From their brothels in lawless 1850s Monterrey, Eliza and Jean set out discover why their fellow workers are going missing
The world turned upside down
Few periods match the British 17th century for turmoil and idealism.No wonder historians have repeatedly been drawn to it, says Lucy Hughes-Hallett
The Ace of Spies
‘James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamt up,’ the former naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming once said.…
Jokes and reminiscences
Edi is dying of ovarian cancer and she’s craving the lemon cake she once got from Dean & Deluca deli…
Be like the rhinoceros
In the penultimate entry of Toby Litt’s A Writer’s Diary, an autofictional daily record of a writer named Toby Litt…
Amerindians abroad
The most influential Native American visitor to Europe in colonial times was a fiction. The protagonist of L’Ingénu, Voltaire’s novel…
