Don’t touch Boots!
‘Don’t stress over short-term stock market swings’ is a maxim on which Donald Trump and I might agree, even if…
The unfairytale life of two European princesses
Wounded by their husbands’ infidelity and shattered by the deaths of their only sons, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France defied court protocol in a bid for independence
The soldier poet: Viva Byron!, by Hugh Thomson, reviewed
What would have happened had Lord Byron fought for Simon Bolivar in Latin America, rather than dying of fever in Missolonghi, campaigning for Greek independence?
The mystery of the missing man: Green Ink, by Stephen May, reviewed
Things look bad for the former socialist MP Victor Grayson after he threatens to expose David Lloyd George’s cash for honours scandal in 1920
The comfort of curling up with a violent thriller
When post-natal depression descends, Lucy Mangan describes reaching for Lee Child, finding catharsis in his no-nonsense villain-bashing
Survival of the cruellest in 16th-century Constantinople
It was kill or be killed for the Ottoman sultan’s heirs in a bizarre succession ritual involving the ruthless culling of close relatives
The world’s most exotic languages are vanishing in a puff of smoke
Among the many ‘rare tongues’ explored by Lorna Gibb is the use of smoke signals by native north Americans, the oldest form of long-distance communication
The Bloomsbury Group’s precarious paradise
The latest biography of Vanessa Bell explores her domestic and artistic radicalism but avoids the central contradiction of her life: deceiving her daughter Angelica for years over her parentage
