Biography
A dazzling vision
There are a number of reports by his contemporaries of Thomas Gainsborough at work. They make you realise what a…
The morality of conducting
Now he is the greatest figure for me, in the world. [Toscanini is] the last proud, noble, unbending representative (with…
… and an awesome beak
The Enigma of Kidson is a quintessentially Etonian book: narcissistic, complacent, a bit silly and ultimately beguiling. It is the…
Dante’s egomania
Unlike Shakespeare, who kept himself out of all his works, except the Sonnets, Dante was endlessly reworking his autobiography, even…
Running the triple crown
The story of the Czechoslovak runner Emil Zátopek is a tale from athletics’ age of innocence. Without the aid of…
George and Martha Washington were an odd first First Couple
Frances Wilson on America’s likeable, if unlikely, first First Couple
James Klugmann and Guy Burgess: the wasted lives of spies
Geoff Andrews’s ‘Shadow Man’, James Klugmann, was the talent-spotter, recruiter and mentor of the Cambridge spy ring. From 1962, aged…
Designing the swimming car, the Doodlebug and the Panzer tank was all in a day’s work for Ferdinand Porsche
The aggressive character of the famous German sports car, in a sort of sympathetic magic, often transfers itself to owner-drivers.…
Through the eyes of spies
Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its…
An exquisite flowering of talent
It seems odd that a singer, musician, television performer and sculptor who typified the 1960s as vividly as Rory McEwen…
The Spectator’s Notes
It is natural to assume that, if a majority votes No in the referendum on Britain’s EU membership, we shall…
Blitzed on Benzedrine
Lore has it that those viewing naughty books in the British Museum could once do so only with the Archbishop…
Just sign here…
This being the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, it is not surprising that there should be two…
Big Cheese in MI6
Second world war deception operations are now widely known, particularly those which misled the Germans into thinking that the D-Day…
Scobberlotcher
Hilary Spurling found a certain blunting of the irregularities of John Aubrey’s language in Ruth Scurr’s vicarious autobiography of the…
Bad boys of fashion
Philip Hensher explores a dangerously intoxicating world, and discovers just how quickly famous designers can become an irrelevance
Silent knight
In February 1861 a 21-year-old French medievalist called Paul Meyer walked into Sotheby’s auction house near Covent Garden. He had…
A cold coming
You can tell a lot about a book from its bibliography. It’s the non-fiction equivalent of skipping to the final…
Dead poets’ society
In December 1817 Benjamin Robert Haydon — vivid diarist and painter of huge but inferior canvases of historic events —…
Mao’s violent disciple
Much has been written about Deng Xiao-ping (1904–1997), most recently by Ezra Vogel in Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of…
The wandering Jew
Stefan Zweig wasn’t, to be honest, a very good writer. This delicious fact was hugged to themselves by most of…
Cometh the hour, cometh the man
An eccentric, thoroughgoing genius, surfing every wave with a death-defying self-belief — Philip Hensher wonders who Boris Johnson can be thinking of
After Albert
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
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…
A monumental achievement
Ivor Roberts-Jones was in many ways the right artist at the wrong time. Had the sculptor been born a few…
