Book review – biography
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://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/11/Marie_Colvin.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
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’…
Ménage à quatre with Robert Graves
‘I have a very poor opinion of other people’s opinion of me — though I am fairly happy in my…
Anita Leslie: sparkling socialite with the Croix de Guerre
Anita Leslie knew how to tell a story. Arranging to sit for a portrait six months before she died, she…
Bruce Lee: weird, gruesome and oh-so-cool
Every cinema-loving person has a favourite Bruce Lee moment. My own comes towards the end of Enter the Dragon, the…
![Mandela revisits his prison cell on Robben Island in 1994 [Getty]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/07/mandela.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
What Nelson Mandela really craved in prison: Pond’s Cold Cream
So much rubbish has been written over the years by those who feared, revered or pretended to know Nelson Mandela…
You didn’t have to be mad to work for Tommy Nutter — but it helped
The tailor’s art is a triumph of mind over schmatte. Not just in the physical cutting and stitching, but in…
The sound of silence that echoes round Paul Simon
Someone has gone to a lot of trouble choosing the jacket cover of Robert Hilburn’s authorised biography of Paul Simon…
America’s wittiest women fight to be taken seriously
From Aphra Behn to Virginia Woolf, women who make a living by their pens have frequently felt the need to…
The young Descartes: I fought, therefore I thought
Descartes is most generally known these days for being the guy who was sure he existed because he was thinking.…
Kitty Marion: too radical even for the suffragettes
The suffragettes are largely remembered not as firestarters and bombers but as pale martyrs to patriarchy. The hunger artists refusing…
There’s much of Astrid Lindgren in the carrot-haired rebel Pippi Longstocking
Pippi Longstocking is a nine-year-old girl who lives alone with a monkey and horse in a cottage called Villa Villekulla…
Henry Miller — pornographer or prophet?
Few writers seem less deserving of resuscitation than Henry Miller. When the Scottish poet and novelist John Burnside was asked…
How one man took on the French betting system — and kept winning against the odds
About a third of the way through this book I worked out that I had an unbeatable system for winning…
From persecutor to preacher: the journey of St Paul
Saint Paul is unique among those who have changed the course of history — responsible not just for one but…
Was Ada Lovelace the true founder of Silicon Valley?
It’s more than 160 years since the death of the computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage’s ‘enchantress of numbers’ and…
Thomas Paine: spendthrift, scrounger and polemicist of genius
‘We have it in our power to begin the world over again.’ Ronald Reagan made this most unconservative of lines…
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