Biography
The world of Thessyros: an icky erotic fantasy
Lore has it that those viewing naughty books in the British Museum could once do so only with the Archbishop…
King John was not a good man: two distinguished historians echo A.A. Milne
This being the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, it is not surprising that there should be two…
Baiting the trap with CHEESE: how we fooled the Germans in the second world war
Second world war deception operations are now widely known, particularly those which misled the Germans into thinking that the D-Day…
The lost words of John Aubrey, from apricate to scobberlotcher
Hilary Spurling found a certain blunting of the irregularities of John Aubrey’s language in Ruth Scurr’s vicarious autobiography of the…
Drink, drugs and dressing-up: behind the scenes of the fashion industry
Philip Hensher explores a dangerously intoxicating world, and discovers just how quickly famous designers can become an irrelevance
William Marshal: kingmaker — or just king of the joust?
In February 1861 a 21-year-old French medievalist called Paul Meyer walked into Sotheby’s auction house near Covent Garden. He had…
This Winter Journey goes far beyond expectation
You can tell a lot about a book from its bibliography. It’s the non-fiction equivalent of skipping to the final…
Sunday roasts and beaded bubbles: dining with the poets
In December 1817 Benjamin Robert Haydon — vivid diarist and painter of huge but inferior canvases of historic events —…
Deng Xiaoping: following in Mao’s footsteps
Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…
Stefan Zweig: the tragedy of a great bad writer
Stefan Zweig wasn’t, to be honest, a very good writer. This delicious fact was hugged to themselves by most of…
Does Boris Johnson really expect us to think he's Churchill?
An eccentric, thoroughgoing genius, surfing every wave with a death-defying self-belief — Philip Hensher wonders who Boris Johnson can be thinking of
Is there anything left to say about Queen Victoria? A.N. Wilson has found plenty
A new, revisionist biography argues that it was only after her husband’s death that Queen Victoria found her true self. Jane Ridley is impressed
Peter Levi – poet, priest and life-enhancer
Hilaire Belloc was once being discussed on some television programme. One of the panellists was Peter Levi. The other critics…
The lost Victorian who sculpted Churchill
Ivor Roberts-Jones was in many ways the right artist at the wrong time. Had the sculptor been born a few…
Chris Barber should let someone meaner tell his story
Chris Barber, still going strong with his big band, was born in 1930. He heard jazz as a schoolboy on…
The yes-no-maybe world of Harrison Birtwistle
For better or worse, we live in the age of the talking composer. Some talk well, some badly, a few…
Ladies' hats were his waterlillies - the obsessive brilliance of Edgar Degas
Lucian Freud once said that ‘being able to draw well is the hardest thing — far harder than painting, as…
My family's better days
Simon Blow recalls the wealth, recklessness and beauty of his family’s better days
The Angel of Charleston, by Stewart MacKay - review
Above the range in the kitchen at Charleston House is a painted inscription: ‘Grace Higgens worked here for 50 years…
'She's the most important Jewish writer since Kafka!'
Ian Thomson on the turbulent life of Clarice Lispector
What was the secret of Queen Victoria's rebel daughter?
Princess Louise (1848–1939), Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter, was the prettiest and liveliest of the five princesses, and the only one…
The Roth of tenderness and of rage
In the autumn of 2012, Philip Roth told a French magazine that his latest book, Nemesis, would be his last.…
How honest was Bernard Berenson?
Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat
The mad, mum-fixated maiden aunt of modernism
Marianne Moore’s poems are notoriously ‘difficult’ but her personality and the circumstances of her life are as fascinating today as…
The Last Knight, by Robert O’Byrne - review
I have to declare an interest: for many years the Knight and I were the closest of friends until a…
