Elite sport
The England team is riding high, but most of its stars learned to play in public schools
High finance, low tricks
Michael Lewis, the author behind the new movie The Big Short, is furious that reforms have been blocked
Rise of the Norland nanny
Girls from this traditional school for nannies are in huge demand around the world
Israel notebook
But no one – friends, relatives, colleagues or immigration officials – will ever believe that
Charlemagne’s legacy
The vast, sprawling entity, generally considered a byword for inefficiency, actually worked remarkably well, according to Peter H. Wilson
A pitiful wreck
Julian Barnes’s latest novel, The Noise of Time, is a brilliant portrait of an artist trying not to sign away his soul
Tracking the super cats
If you read one nature book this year, make it Sooyong Park’s account of wildlife hell among the most beautiful — and persecuted — animals on earth
Age cannot wither her
Alive, Alive Oh!, Athill’s latest manifesto for living life to the full, could not be bettered
Drying out in the Orkneys
Amy Liptrot’s frank memoir of dipsomania, and drying out, in the remotest of the Orkneys makes for addictive reading
The medium is the message
Molly Crabapple’s account of misogyny and exploitation in the American art world is a valuable political document, strikingly illustrated
Girl about town
Emily Chappell’s vivid memoir, What Goes Around, is a welcome new take on London from a cycle courier’s perspective
One holy mess
Ysenda Maxtone Graham finds Irving’s latest novel, Avenue of Mysteries — largely concerned with the Catholic church — one holy mess
Revolution now and then
Gorky’s The Mother, hailed as a paean to socialist ideals when first published, is surprisingly topical a century later
A Day Off
Well, I’ll go window-shopping in Larousse for seeds of words. Strangely, they’re not for sale — you help yourself to…
Pornographer-in-Chief
Reputedly the highest paid screenwriter in the business, Davies is unrepentant about the gratuitous rumpy-pumpy in his adaptions of the classics
On the money
A film about the financial crash that sounds boring on paper but that will fill you with righteous anger
Pride and prejudice
Plus: a monumental feat of memory and performance by a sensational talent at the Southwark Playhouse
Turkish delight
And their Latin dancers are showing us Brits that, in classical ballet, technical dazzle isn’t vulgar - it’s vital
Age concern
And was Gustavo Dudamel happy with Barenboim’s Morton Feldman speeds in the Brahms? It certainly saved Barenboim from playing too many wrong notes
All in the mind
Plus: Radio Five Live goes inside one of the largest hospitals in the UK, Queen Elizabeth in Birmingham
Class of ’83
It makes Channel 4's Deutschland 83 a seductive Sunday night rival to BBC's War and Peace
