Thanks to the rugby the Scots have a real grievance at last
Could this be revenge for the role of Scottish regiments in the Boer War?
The swastika was always in plain sight
Reviewing two new books on the Third Reich, Dominic Green argues that, by transferring ‘collective will’ to Hitler, the German volk were entirely complicit in Nazi atrocities
Charlotte Brontë: Cinderella or ugly sister?
Claire Harman’s new biography casts Charlotte not as feminist heroine but as an unhappy, unfulfilled woman, disappointed in all the men closest to her
David Mitchell is in a genre of his own
Slade House, Mitchell’s latest fiction, is an amusing puzzle about the paranormal that defies classification — but I wish he’d return to Cloud Atlas territory
What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?
Disappointingly, we are none the wiser for reading Jay Nordlinger’s ‘inquiry’ into the children of 20 dictators — except that Castro’s ten-year-old had plenty to say about the banning of Christmas in Cuba
Would even Blair have put Felix Dennis in the Lords?
Fergus Byrne’s biography — not only authorised but commissioned — still makes the manipulative media mogul utterly repellent
John Lennon’s desert island luxury
Merging fact with fiction, Kevin Barry’s Beatlebone centres on Lennon’s retreat from New York to his lonely Irish island for rest and primal screaming
From Spike Milligan — and Marge Simpson — with love, light, peace and great respect
More Letters of Note, compiled by Shaun Usher — and if you don’t find anything of interest in this enchanting new volume, you are not a proper human being
When English Catholics were considered as dangerous as jihadis
Gerard Kilroy’s life of Edmund Campion shows how the gifted, charismatic Jesuit never sought a martyr’s fate
Behind the scenes at the Brighton bombing
Seen from the viewpoint of an IRA terrorist and a hotel manager, Jonathan Lee’s novel High Dive imaginatively recreates the carnage at the 1984 Tory conference in Brighton
Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing
Jenny McCartney talks to the unstoppable literary force about the new film adaptation of his novel Brooklyn
I doubt Goethe intended Werther’s sorrows to be as unremitting as this
But English Touring Opera offers relief with their transgressive romp through Tales of Hoffmann
Shakespeare at his freest and most exuberant: The Wars of the Roses reviewed
Plus: two comedies at the Tricycle and Old Red Lion that deliver laughs aplenty
Repetitive but compelling: Giacometti at the National Portrait Gallery reviewed
Plus: Courtauld Gallery's excellent display of Peter Lanyon's gliding paintings show a master of the 'airscape'
Self-pitying, despairing, often delusional: the real Marlon Brando
Listen To Me Marlon has Brando burbling into your ear for 102 minutes. It’s burbling at its most compelling
What’s it like to talk at length to a serial killer?
Plus: the lonely life of the Pitcairn Islanders and a sizzling new Arthur Miller adaptation on Radio 4
The Last Kingdom is BBC2’s solemnly cheesy answer to Game of Thrones
Plus: the start of the second series of Channel 4’s Fargo suggests this might be one of the highlights of the TV year
Mentor
for Marisa Foz del Barrio You divorced on the first day it was legal, were imprisoned three times as a…
Back to the future
With luck and prudent decision-making, the Coalition government will ride comfortably high in the opinion polls up to and beyond…
Dogzheimers
How far should a man be prepared to go for a free meal? Two weeks ago I came 12,000 miles…
Australian Diary
My Sunday starts watching the Wallabies take on Wales. My boys and I are transfixed by the gutsy display of…
Cost benefit analysis of a coup
Australia needs to take a careful look at its new PM-slaying political culture
Tolerating Islam
Muslim leaders must not hide beneath the deceptive robes of ‘hard’ multiculturalism
