Nazis
A grand inquisitor
Hidden behind Kensington Palace, in one of London’s smartest streets, there is a grand old house which played a leading…
Burning passions
This is a book which, as one eyes its lavish illustrations and dips into its elegant prose, looks as if…
Wishful thinking
Deirdre McCloskey has been at work for many years on a huge project: to explain why the world has become…
Diary
To while away the time at airports, I like to spot celebrities. But pickings have been slim. Where is everyone?…
Wild man of the woods
The other day I visited a psychic medium in Croydon, south-east London. Mavis Grimstick (not quite her real name) boasted…
Swastika
There is a nice row of swastikas at head height in Burlington Gardens, behind the Royal Academy. They are carved…
Brothers grim
What is a serious film festival doing opening with Ethan and Joel Coens’ turkey Hail, Caesar!? James Woodall reports from Berlin
The Islamist Nazis and Corbyn’s wilful blindness
Many people watching Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on Marr last Sunday will have been shocked by his remarks about the need…
Sins of the fathers
This is a documentary in which three men travel across Europe together, but they’re not pleasurably interrailing, even though there…
Allan Massie’s Bordeaux Quartet is truer to Occupied France than any history
In a recent book review, the historian Norman Stone wrote: ‘Maybe the second world war can now be left to…
The house that Alfred built
This is a book about boundaries — and relationships. At its heart is the eponymous house by the lake, which…
Hero or collaborator?
Simon Baron-Cohen wonders whether the humane Hans Asperger may finally have betrayed the vulnerable children in his care in Nazi-occupied Vienna
The brutal mask of anarchy
In September 1939 Britain went to war against Germany, ostensibly in defence of Poland. One big secret that the British…
Sonia alone
In 1978, shortly before she died, the artist Sonia Delaunay was asked in an interview whether she considered herself a…
All that glitters is not gold
Woman in Gold feels rather like a Jewish version of Philomena as this too is about an older woman seeking…
‘You are always close to me’
Hitler’s adoring notes to Unity Mitford – and her family’s campaign to stop my book
Brought to book
Suite Française is being billed as a second world war romance about ‘forbidden love’ and, in this regard, it is…
Ten days in May
‘If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me if the people perish in it.’ Bruno…
All in the mind
Big event. A new play from Sir Tom. And he tackles one of philosophy’s oldest and crunchiest issues, which varsity…
Dirty dancing
Vienna’s New Year’s Day concert is still tarnished by its Nazi origins, says Norman Lebrecht
Tales of the Occupation
Earlier this year Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for the art of memory with which he has…
Bear necessity
‘Please look after this bear,’ reads the famous label hanging round Paddington’s neck, and this film does that, admirably, handsomely,…
Mother Courage
Italo Calvino, the Italian arch-fabulist, wrote a foreword to this celebrated wartime diary when it appeared in Italy in 1956.…
Object lessons
What Radio 3 needs is a musical version of Neil MacGregor. The director of the British Museum and now a…
Signifying nothing
Fury is a second world war drama that plays with us viscerally and unsparingly — I think I saw a…
