Putin’s winning hand
For all the anti-Russian rhetoric, we've been exposed as posturing, weak and divided
The wrong kind of granny
Working-class people do grandparenting right. Middle-class ones, increasingly, don't
Notes on… Wallpaper
These hand-printed patterns aren't just charming or even lovely – they're magical
‘Tell it not in the future’
A review of Michael Scott’s Delphi: A History of the Center of the Ancient World. It's a fascinating mystery, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped up in unfortunate academic jargon
Who knows wins
A review of Chapman Pincher’s Dangerous to Know. At 100, the Daily Express's veteran spycatcher isn't giving up his obsessions – but he still got most of the big stories right
Småland
Småland’s wooden cottages with sunflowers lack nothing. Brightly-painted, small in the distance like stories, they call the eye on and…
In Fleet Street’s fast lane
A review of Mary Kenny’s Something of Myself and Others. Life lived to the hilt
Round and round the garden, again
A review of Sarah Raven’s Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst: The Creation of a Garden. Haven't we had enough cuttings from Vita Sackville-West by now?
Those little grey cells in operation
A review of Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery. Cutting people’s heads open, it turns out, really does your head in
The mask of truth
junkie hard place
A review of Siri Hustvedt’s The Blazing World. This novel's artspeak may be a headache but the tenderness and generosity of the storytelling is unbeatable.
Small wars in academe
A review of John Carey’s The Unexpected Professor. This reader and reformer was the perfect don for his time – which, of course, meant hating dons
In deep water
A review of Boyhood Island, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett. Childhood mundanities are made universal in the Norwegian author’s account of his childhood
They do it with mirrors
A review of James Hall’s The Self-Portrait: A Cultural History. This wonderful survey has brilliant timing – but not nearly enough illustrations
Cracking up
Every page of David Henry and Joe Henry’s biography Furious Cool carries something either appalling or amusing
Old school ties
Robert Gore-Langton talks to Julian Mitchell about the painful roots of his hit play
The Menuhin test
The world’s toughest violin competition is jam-packed with Asians – and this year, not a single Brit
German giants
The British Museum's immaculately presented 'Germany Divided' shows the strength of its headline act. Plus two more German shows - Renaissance Impressions at the Royal Academy and Strange Beauty at the National Gallery
Senses working overtime
As a new Venetian exhibition shows, the Cubist was a pioneer in poster design and experimental film as well as a painter
