Biography
The disgrace of Juan Carlos of Spain, a modern-day Don Juan
The once popular king was forced into exile in 2014 when rumours of profligacy, illegitimate children and ‘an unbridled sexual appetite’ finally caught up with him
In the dazzling company of Alexander Pope and friends
For three months in Twickenham in 1726, Pope and his guests John Gay and Jonathan Swift worked on their satirical masterpieces while entertaining each other with their repartee
The sham shaman: the fantastic lies of Carlos Castaneda
An entirely invented memoir, supposedly relaying the wisdom of a Mexican guru, was not only a cult bestseller but was endorsed by anthropologists and even UCLA
Wham! How George Michael shot to stardom straight from school
The singer himself described his career as ‘unreal’, and admitted that one reason for cruising was the rare chance it gave him to meet ‘ordinary people’
Insufferable martinet or inspirational hero? Field Marshal Montgomery was both
An abusive childhood may help explain the contradictory character of Britain’s great second world war commander, says Gary Mead
Caroline Aherne’s comedic genius is much missed
No one today can unmask pomposity and self-obsession as devastatingly as Aherne did in the guise of the faux-naive Mrs Merton
Witty, lyrical and abstract: the art of Kurt Schwitters
The German Dadaist developed his own brand of anti-rational art, transforming the junk of everyday life into vivid collages
The vexed relationship of Winston Churchill and George V
The King found his minister ‘very socialistic’, and was especially outraged when Churchill, on moving to the Admiralty in 1911, suggested calling a ship HMS Oliver Cromwell
The short, eventful life of George Forster – explorer, naturalist and revolutionary
By the time he died, aged 39, the German-Polish polymath had travelled the world, mastered ten languages, witnessed the French Revolution and campaigned tirelessly for human rights
Another heroic freethinker is wiped from Russian history
Vera Gedroits, the world’s first woman professor of surgery, inevitably fell foul of Stalin, despite supporting workers’ rights and saving hundreds of lives in the Russo-Japanese war
Was Marcel Duchamp’s notorious ‘Fountain’ even his own work?
The ‘readymade’ sculpture, signed R. Mutt, may have been the brainchild of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and only claimed by Duchamp after her death
A glimpse of the extremes of Emily Brontë’s imagination
Confined spaces as well as open ones preoccupied Emily, with dungeons and graves filling her poetry as much as the unbounded landscape of the moors
Lean and mean: Mick Jagger was always a tightwad
His parsimony included replacing chocolate biscuits with plain ones at recording sessions and paying a derisory £50 for what became known as ‘the most famous logo in the history of pop music’
A portrait of the fin de siècle in all its morbid decadence
Matthew Sturgis leads us into a sultry, incense-laden world where Death itself nurses a sinister preference for the young
J.G. Ballard’s surreal fiction continues to resonate through the century
Christopher Priest’s sympathetic biography, completed by his wife after his premature death, will enlighten new readers and maintain Ballard’s reputation
A deadly imitation game: the fate of the British teenager who posed as a Russian oligarch’s son
Patrick Radden Keefe investigates the mystery of Zac Brettler’s fall from the balcony of a luxury riverside apartment into the Thames one November night in 2019
Defiantly creative to the end: the transgressive Dorothea Tanning
Born in Illinois in 1910 in the middle of a hurricane, the experimental Surrealist became the model of the fiercely independent artist
How the paralysed Franz Rosenzweig continued to translate the Bible
After being struck down by a neurodegenerative disease at the age of 36, the inspirational scholar pursued his biblical project with the twitch of one thumb
Riddled with contradictions: the enigma of Jan Morris
The self-made woman remained obstinately masculine; the admirer of imperialism was a passionate Welsh nationalist; and the travel writer could be both superficial and profound
James Baldwin – dogged by painful uncertainties throughout life
Often snared in emotional turmoil, he never knew who his father was, and resisted being pigeonholed on questions of race, blame and responsibility
Why Hitler’s suave architect escaped the noose at Nuremberg
Albert Speer was treated leniently because he was softly-spoken, well-dressed and ‘much the most appealing’ of all the defendants, according to Telford Taylor, one of the prosecutors
W.H. Auden’s virtuosity masked careful craftsmanship
Poetry came so easily to Auden that at times he had consciously to ‘keep the diction and rhythm within a hairsbreadth of prose without becoming it’
How Ulysses horrified the stuffed shirts of New York’s literary establishment
The magazine editor Margaret C. Anderson’s spirited attempts to introduce Joyce’s masterpiece to 1920s America resulted in a court case and heavy fine for disseminating obscenity
Rupert Murdoch’s warped vision of family
The absentee father, who always put his media empire first, enjoyed playing his children off against one another – with crippling consequences
Leonardo Sciascia and the reshaping of the detective novel
Crimes go unpunished while injustice is upheld and truth perverted. Such is the Mafia reality, according to the saturnine Sciascia
