Tom Holland
The best of this year’s children’s books
Among many delights, the Greco-Persian wars are brought to thrilling new life and a truly bizarre Alaskan folk tale is retold
Why do the British still dream of bricks and mortar?
For the past century, a ‘property-owning democracy’ has been envisaged as a kind of magic cure for social ills. But high prices now mean the opposite of emancipation for many
The best children’s books: a Spectator Christmas survey
J.K. Rowling Poignant, funny and genuinely scary, The Hundred and One Dalmatians was one of my favourite books as a…
Our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
Dan Hitchens on our love affair with the Anglo-Saxons
Wine that puts politics in its place
In the era of vinyl, lost in one of Bruckner’s longueurs, it could be hard to tell what was stuck,…
I swear this is the last Marvel film I see: Captain America reviewed
Captain America: Civil War is the 897th instalment — or something like it — in the Marvel comic franchise. This…
Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers
Athens I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall…
In defence of Herodotus
How many writers would give their eye teeth to have a book reissued 2,500 years after their death? It certainly…
