Book review – History
In grandmother’s treasure-chest
Juliet Nicolson examines women’s lives and changing fashions through a rich hoard of buttons for all occasions
1956: the year of living dangerously
The book of the year has long been a favoured genre in popular history, and is a commonplace today. While…
The realm of England: from the Pennines to the Pyrenees
Most people know more about the 12th century than they think they do. This is, as Richard Huscroft reminds us…
Alexander Humboldt: a great explorer rediscovered
The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was once the most famous man in Europe bar Napoleon. And if you judge…
Science was invented in 1572
There was no science before 1572, the year that Tycho Brahe saw a new star in the night sky above…
Scents and sensibility
Choosing to smell of something other than ourselves, and then perhaps in time coming to view that fragrance as ‘our’…
Brian Sewell votes the Silver Ghost the best car in the world
One of the great joys of the late Brian Sewell’s style of writing was his almost child-like bluntness. He had…
George and Martha Washington were an odd first First Couple
Frances Wilson on America’s likeable, if unlikely, first First Couple
Richard III: a bad man — and even worse king
When archaeologists unearthed the battered mortal remains of King Richard III beneath a council car park in Leicester in 2012,…
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…
Was King James I murdered or merely poisoned in error?
Beware hedonists bearing white powder. This, in part, was the message pressed in a short book about the excesses of…
Jack the Ripper unmasked again
The Whitechapel Fiend is a psychic conduit for the vilest aspects of Victorian sex and class, and a creature mainly…
Shock and awe in Coventry, 14 November 1940
On 14 November 1940, at seven in the evening, the Luftwaffe began to bomb Coventry. The skyline turned red like…
Rab Butler was too indecisive (and badly dressed) to be Prime Minister
‘The best prime minister we never had’ is not an epithet exclusive to Rab Butler. Widely applied to the late…
A soothing Negroni for la dolce vita
The first draft of the famous story was called ‘A Martini as Big as the Ritz’. That’s not true, but…
London fog: from the Big Smoke to the Big Choke
‘A foggy day in London town,’ croons Fred Astaire in the 1937 musical comedy A Damsel in Distress, puffing nonchalantly…
Has Salem bewitched Stacy Schiff?
There have been many books devoted to the terrible events that took place in the small rural community of Salem…
Spies in the spotlight
Spying is a branch of philosophy, although you would never guess it from that expression on Daniel Craig’s face. Its…
The swastika was always in plain sight
Ordinary Germans under the Third Reich did have wills of their own, argues Dominic Green. Most actively embraced Nazi ideology, and were aware of the extermination of the Jews. As the war worsened for them, what did they think they were fighting for?
What does it really mean to have a tyrannical father?
What was it like, asks Jay Nordlinger, to have Mao as your father, or Pol Pot, or Papa Doc? The…
The best of British — from Agatha Christie to the YBAs
Is it true that, having lost an empire, we reinvented ourselves as an island of entertainers? Do we channel the…
The beloved, mistreated and traumatised dogs of war
If you love dogs and or live with one — I declare an interest on both counts — there is…
The house that Alfred built
This is a book about boundaries — and relationships. At its heart is the eponymous house by the lake, which…
What drove Europe into two world wars?
Sir Ian Kershaw won his knight’s spurs as a historian with his much acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and…
Spirit of place: the landscape of myth and magic
We live in disenchanted times. We barely do God, most of us don’t do magic and frenzied consumerism occupies our…
