The deal Dave didn’t do
Lord Pearson, Ukip’s former leader, on the deal that might have saved the Tories from coalition
Three was a crowd
A review of The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me, by Sofka Zinovieff. Stravinsky, Beaton, Dali, Betjeman, Fonteyn - Berners and his lover 'The Mad Boy' knew everyone who was anyone
A glimpse of the limelight
A review of Deep Down Dark, by Hector Tobar. The Chilean miners thought they were screwed trapped underground – but they were even more screwed when they got out
The Irony of Wislava Szymborska
In London, I remember the indignation. Surely the Nobel prize should have gone to Zbigniew Herbert, the Polish poet we…
Fear of freedom
A review of Phantom Terror: The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty, 1789 – 1848, by Adam Zamoyski. This masterful history shows how secret policing arrested the development Europe
Rock of ages
A review of Rising Ground: A Search for the Spirit of the Place, by Philip Marsden. A fascinating book about the human endeavour to make meaning of life
Daddy, we hardly knew you
A review of The Red Earl: The Extraordinary Life of the 16th Earl of Huntingdon, by Selina Hastings. A daughter's biography characterized by a beguiling mix of tenderness and puzzlement
Our homes inhabit us
A review of My Life in Houses, by Margaret Forster. It’s a book that feels like it’s being told over a cup of tea
Queen of rom-com
A review of The Most of Nora Ephron, by Nora Ephron. A greatest hits album that includes several masterpieces of comic construction
Double trouble
A review of The Buddha’s Return, by Gaito Gazdanov, translated by Bryan Karentnyk. The existentialist fiction of this 1920s Russian émigré speaks to our time
Palaces for the people
A review of Prefab Homes, by Elisabeth Blanchet. In 1946 you had to be very posh to have a house with an inside toilet
They had a dream
A review of Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890 – 1923, by R.F. Foster. There will be many accounts of the Easter Rising but few will be as enjoyable as this
Talking himself into madness
A review of Ezra Pound: Poet, Volume II: The Epic Years, by A. David Moody. This was also the period in which the controversial poet talked himself into madness
An idler’s idyll
A review of Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov, translated by Stephen Pearl. But like many apparent idlers, Oblomov isn’t really lazy – he just spends a lot of time in bed
Flotsam and jetsam flung across the shore
Ces Nooteboom asks lots of presumptious questions like this in his Letters to Poseidon, translated by Laura Watkinson – but he’s more than a match for the trident-bearing earth-shaker
Title Stories: Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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Leigh’s late flowering
Hermione Eyre talks to the filmmaker about Turner, Hollywood and making films his own way
Art from another planet
William Cook finds a German extraterrestrial, Sigmar Polke, exhibiting at the Tate
What iff?
The disastrous first performance of Rachmaninov’s First Symphony has cast a long shadow over the work
Boys alone
Plus: more atavistic children from Scottish Ballet's The Crucible and some pow-zap hip hop from Boy Blue Entertainment
