Heavy mob
To keep weight off you need to understand and control your diet. That’s the opposite of what happens at slimming clubs
Keeper of the secrets
Churchill’s youngest daughter did her country great service – in the war and after
Moscow’s Wizard of Oz
Russia’s foreign policy has become a ‘Wizard of Oz’ mixture of fake grandiosity and real menace
Fabled splendours
A review of A Strange Kind of Paradise: India Through Foreign Eyes by Sam Miller. The country provoked anger and wonder in equal measure
The good companion
A review of New Selected Poems by P.J. Kavanagh, with a foreword by Derek Mahon. The poet who imagined heaven as ‘big rooms filled with laughing’
The crimson petal and the white
A review of Kingmaker: Winter Pilgrims, by Toby Clements. The author’s pages are aflutter with the emotions of the Wars of the Roses
A choice of children’s books
A Dutch cracker, a second-rate Harry Potter, a wonderful story of a problem horse and a gripping tale (promise) of the making of a French motor car
Nights at the Opéra
A review of Dirty Bertie, by Stephen Clarke. The rebuilding of Paris was partly about making it a capital for sexual tourism
A modern Mark Twain
A review of Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, edited by Jay Jennings. Despite critical acclaim and a devoted fan base, the American author seems destined to remain on the sidelines
Simply not Kricket
A review of Field of Shadows: The English Cricket Tour of Nazi Germany, 1937, by Dan Waddell. This entertaining history includes some great myth-busting
Making hay …
A review of Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Meadow, by John Lewis-Stempel. An extended essay that mixes science, observation and history with a lot of love.
… and history in the Welsh Marches
A review of Darkling, by Laura Beatty. This novel about two Marcher women separated by three centuries is masterly in its understatement
When the Rains Came
When the rains continued the rivers rebelled, the swans moved inland and even the bank was sandbagged and we saw…
Research Centre
Beyond the measured stretch of lawns and hedges are cultivated rows where snug plastic tunnels creep. Indoors, the fantastic spores…
Resistance and reprisal
A review of The Cruel Victory, by Paddy Ashdown. The last days of the Free Republic of the Vercors sounded with ‘the screaming of unmilked cows and the rattle of the machine guns’
Not many good jokes on the way to the forum
A review of Laughter in Ancient Rome, by Mary Beard. Roman humour may not have aged well but it’s still fascinating knowing what made them laugh
Wasted in the wastelands
A review of Music Night at the Apollo: A Memoir of Drifting, by Lilian Pizzichini. The Southall underworld explored
Viola and St Paul’s
Behind the scenes of the American video artist’s new installation 'Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water)'
Irresistible turkey
The film has all the emotional heft of one of those American daytime TV biopics. I highly recommend it
