K2’s fatal attraction
Take one drug-addled occultist, one forlorn aristocrat, an assortment of urgent colonials and you have, no, not the western canon…
A book about the ordinary nothings that, in the end, are everything
We live in a world in which nuance is trampled on and cannot survive. Is that true? I don’t know.…
Flawed, unproductive and heroic: the real Ernest Shackleton
Polar explorers are often cast as mavericks, and this is hardly surprising. The profession requires a disdain for pseudo-orthodoxies and,…
In the steppes of a warlord
Joanna Kavenna is impressed by one man’s 6,000-mile ride through some of the loneliest regions on earth
After the war — apocalypse
On 12 April 1945 the Berlin Philharmonic gave its last performance. The atmosphere in Germany was apocalyptic, the Allied invasion…
Niccolo Machiavelli, by Corrado Vivanti; The Garments of Court and Palace, by Philip Bobbitt
One more anniversary, one more cache of commemorative books. This time we are celebrating the half-millennium since Niccolò Machiavelli produced…
The Long Shadow, by Mark Mills - a review
Mark Mills is known for his historical and literary crime novels, including The Savage Garden, The Information Officer and House…
