A choice of gardening books
Frances Lincoln's The New English Garden looks at 25 innovative gardens that were born this millennium
Sleeping with the enemy
Nicholas Shakespeare recounts his aunt's eventful story in Priscilla: The Hidden Life of the Englishwoman in Occupied France
Too many Cooks…
William Cook's dual narrative of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore is forced and deterministic
Thinking outside the box
Alan Connor's Two Girls, One on each Knee (7) is full of stories about the word puzzle — and tips for beginners
No country for old men
Hooman Majd's new book on Iran, The Ministry of Guidance Invites You to Not Stay, is his best yet
The house-party from hell
The groupies who lived with Byron and the Shelleys paid a high price, shows Andrew McConnell Stott in The Vampyre Family
Remembering Andro Linklater
For 24 years Andro Linklater, who died aged 68 on 3 November, reviewed books in these pages. Always an enthusiast,…
Critical divide
The market thinks a Basquait is worth that much; art critics disagree. Maybe the market is right
Flawed Flute
Someone should tell Simon McBurney, who made the Queen of the Night a cripple, that wheelchairs went out in the last millennium
Visual poetry
Whistler's paintings of the Thames are allusive and atmospheric, but they also show his skill in drawing
Decline and fall
Plus: Watching a version of Sophocles's Ajax set in Afghanistan, I can't wait for a Trojan play set in Trojan times
Here’s Johnny
The actor in Jerusalem and folk composer of Country Mile says he's branched out from his musical roots in west London
Poor service
The movie is full of cliches and has a sentimental ending you could see coming all the way from Australia
Seasonal treats
You shouldn't call something a 'world premiere' unless it's very, very good — so luckily The Human Seasons was
Curse you, Sandbrook
Dominic Sandbrook's maddeningly brilliant Cold War Britain showed it's tricky when your enemy is not in plain sight
Tavener’s lament
We must ensure uncomfortable subjects like mental illness are brought out in the open — and not as a freak show
Eye witness
Among the painters whose works are being displayed is the Spectator's art critic Andrew Lambirth
High life
Kennedy was already embroiled in the Southeast Asian nation — and he'd installed Jupiter missiles against the Soviets
Low life
Plus: Surveying Boris's battered appendage; the Independent's new editor Amol Rajan hasn't eaten for a week
Real life
'How about a bit of tunnelling in the Midlands?' I sometimes say to Patrick McLoughlin, just to be jolly about things
Bridge
My plan this week was to write wittily, but modestly, about our rise from the bowels of relegation after the…
Sanjuro
In Kurosawa’s samurai warrior classic Sanjuro, the hero, a wandering Ronin played by Toshiro Mifune, ends the film in a…
