Book review – biography
The mystical masterpiece from Stalag VIII-A
A meditation on Quartet for the End of Time, Oliver Messiaen’s great prison camp composition, should bring the strange, bird-fixated religious avant-gardist new admirers
The making of Van Gogh as an artist came at a terrible cost
In the manic years 1886-88 when he lived with his brother in Paris, Vincent worked at fever-pitch, exhausting himself and Theo and driving them both towards insanity
The pain of being a Bangle – despite sunshine through the rain
The more successful the female rock band became, the unhappier they seemed, with in-fighting and ‘suicidal thoughts’ leading to break up shortly after their greatest hit
Magnetic and manipulative – the enigma of Gala Dali
Countless people apparently found her fascinating, but apart from being shrewd, scary, intelligent and very beady about money, it’s hard to see why
What prompted Vivien Leigh’s dark journey into madness?
Did her many miscarriages so unhinge the beautiful actress that she ended up a sex-crazed harridan, screaming obscenities at those she loved?
The spy with the bullet-proof Rolls-Royce
Stationed in Paris from 1926 to 1940, the wealthy, debonair ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale, often seen as a model for James Bond, was also a supremely effective intelligence officer
The great French painter who had no time for France
Describing himself as the ‘savage from Peru’, Paul Gauguin avoided French society when he could, returning to Polynesia in 1895, where he spent his final years on the island of Hiva Oa
No one could match Tess, to Thomas Hardy’s dismay
Hardy’s 38-year marriage to Emma Gifford was notoriously acrimonious; but even his much younger second wife, Florence, never seemed to measure up to his fictional heroines
Nothing satisfies Madonna for very long
Her ‘rebel’ life, as told by Mary Gabriel, has been a frenzied churn of friends, lovers, mentors and collaborators, vital to her for a year or two and then discarded
Love and loathing at Harold Wilson’s No. 10
Even her enemies considered Marcia Williams the prime minister’s ‘political wife’, and the real force in the Labour party from the mid-1960s to Wilson’s resignation
Where are the Henry Kissingers when we need them?
It was not until I went to Harvard in 1988 to take a year out from the Foreign Office that…
Where would ballet be without Marius Petipa?
Should the man on the Clapham omnibus ever turn his mind to ballet, he is bound to envisage the work…
How Klaus Fuchs’s treachery may have averted Armageddon
When Klaus Fuchs started passing atomic secrets to the KGB, he changed the course of world events. Forget about Philby…
The free-spirited sisters who galvanised the Bloomsbury Group
It was high time we had a proper look at the four beautiful, original Olivier sisters. Hitherto, with one exception,…
The rollicking adventures of a real-life female sleuth
Susannah Stapleton’s erudite but hugely entertaining debut is a true-life detective story about the quest for a true-life detective. A…
Vasily Grossman: eye-witness to the 20th century’s worst atrocities
Vasily Grossman’s novel Life and Fate (completed in 1960) has been hailed as a 20th-century War and Peace. It has…
Was there no end to John Buchan’s talents?
John Buchan was a novelist, historian, poet, biographer and journalist (assistant editor of The Spectator indeed); a barrister and publisher;…
John Ruskin: the making of a modern prophet
At the time of his death in 1900, John Ruskin was, according to Andrew Hill, ‘perhaps the most famous living…
How fear and loathing of Nixon sent Hunter S. Thompson crazy
Hunter Stockton Thompson blazed across the republic of American arts and letters for too short a time. When in February…
The powerful magnetism of James Clerk Maxwell
Chances are, you are reading these words in some room or other. Build a wall down the middle of it,…
![Marie Colvin, a year before her death. [Rex Features]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Marie_Colvin.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
For Marie Colvin, mortal danger was what made life worth living
When Britain finally lowered the flag in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2007, the army’s top brass valiantly claimed…
Handel’s greatest hits — the glorious London decades
England has been home to three great composer-entrepreneurs since 1700: Benjamin Britten in the 20th century; Arthur Sullivan in the…
Peter Carrington: loyal, funny and driven by a sense of duty
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Peter, but you were a famously successful Leader of Their Lordships and I wondered whether…
The ‘other’ life of Harvey Milk
This is the story of the ‘other’ Harvey Milk. We all know about Harvey the San Francisco politician who was…
Jimmy Page is a Capricorn – that says it all
In 1957, aged 13, Jimmy Page appeared with his skiffle group on a children’s TV programme dedicated to ‘unusual hobbies’…
