Fifty shades of grey wolf
A review of The Wolf Border finds Sarah Hall’s wolves far sexier than her humans
‘You are always close to me’
Hitler’s adoring notes to Unity Mitford – and her family’s campaign to stop my book
Pen pal
They’re not just historical curiosities – the design these days is vastly improved, and sales are increasing
Unfair shares
Uber and Airbnb are brilliant at cosy rhetoric, but they’re helping to create a world in which we’re all less secure
The Vatican
‘Before hours’ tours show you the masterpieces without the crowds – and they’re not that expensive
Thank heaven for little girls
Reviewing Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s The Story of Alice, A.S. Byatt enters the dodgy world of Charles Dodgson
Swing, swing together
In a review of The Old Boys by David Turner, Eric Anderson reflects on how comprehensives created a golden age for Britain's independent schools
Into the valley of death
John Ehle's The Landbreakers contains one of the most frightening passages in American literature
A master of miniatures
A review of Janice Ross’s Like a Bomb Going Off brings the neglected choreographer Leonid Yakobson firmly back centre stage
For the Time Being
Time slips away while we conjecture how to make best use of it. Waking late, the hours already sliding by,…
Back-stabbing the old warrior
As if fighting the Nazis wasn’t enough, Winston Churchill faced fierce dissension in his own ranks, as a review of Jonathan Scheer’s Minister’s of War reminds us
Big Cheese in MI6
Alan Judd recalls how an inventive MI6 agent continued to bamboozle the Germans from prison in a review of Double Cross in Cairo by Nigel West
The true flower of dawn
The crazy life of the rich young girl looking for a surrealist adventure makes for a sadly unexciting novel, says Cressida Connolly
The abundant charms of a playful cupid
Lesley Blanch was incapable of writing a bad or boring sentence, says Philip Ziegler, reviewing On the Wilder Shores of Love
Dark humour for the dark continent
Denis Johnson’s splendidly unreliable spy-narrator in The Laughing Monsters makes for an equally unpredictable, uproarious plot
Studio Portrait
My uncle in his uniform, dog-collared, briar clutched at an angle, brilliantined hair with a central parting, très debonaire. This…
Arch absurdity
In a review of The First Bad Man by Miranda July Robert Collins enters a surreal world of sex and love and loneliness
Promising more than he delivers
Michael Barber’s How to Run a Government doesn’t do what it says on the tin
Public man, lover, connoisseur
In a review of Universal Man by Richard Davenport-Hines, Matthew Walther finds the great economist practically perfect in every way
Survivors
Martin Gayford visits two tantalising - and jaw-dropping - new surveys of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum and Palazzo Strozzi
Making faces
As this National Portrait Gallery show reveals, it took a while for portrait painters to get the public image of Wellington right
Independents’ day
A slew of artistic independent games are supplanting the big studio brands. Peter Hoskin reports on this boardroom-versus-bedroom battle
Hit parade
Gesamtkunstwerk be damned. Long live the Baroque jukebox. Alexandra Coghlan on two Handel pasticcios, Giove in Argo and Catone in Utica, at the London Handel Festival
