All great fun: Mary Churchill dances through the war
The famous photographic portrait by Karsh of Winston Churchill as wartime prime minster personifies heroic defiance and grim determination. His…
Stirling Moss’s charmed life in the fast lane
‘Who do you think you are — Stirling Moss?’ a genially menacing traffic cop would ask a hapless motorway transgressor.…
How St Ives became Barbara Hepworth’s spiritual home
‘To see a world in a grain of sand’, to attain the mystical perception that Blake advocated, requires a concentrated,…
Hitler’s devastating secret weapon: V2, by Robert Harris, reviewed
After Stalingrad, Hitler desperately needed an encouraging novelty. Wernher von Braun, Germany’s leading rocketeer in the second world war, expertly…
Why Niki Lauda was considered the bravest man in sport
Formula One motor racing is the perennial, worldwide contest that most reliably gratifies hero-worshipping, power-worshipping, money-worshipping, technology-worshipping ghouls, and some…
We were highly amused: the Queen — and Mrs Thatcher — thought Ken Dodd tattyfilarious
Doddy! Thou shouldst be living at this hour. England hath need of tickling sticks. So also hath the rest of…
Visiting the world’s masterpieces is a quixotic undertaking
From his base in London, Martin Gayford has spent much of his career as an art critic travelling. He has…
Getting to grips with rocket science
Now that we are stupidly rendering Earth almost entirely uninhabitable by many species including our own (through overcrowding, failing political…
The age of chivalry was an age of devilry
Agatha Christie’s spirit must be loving this poisonous new historical entertainment. Eleanor Herman has already enjoyed the success of Sex…
Humans are animals, and our extinction is inevitable – but we’re still pretty amazing
Ever since enlivenment of the primordial blob, before thoughts were first verbalised, all nature has always been motivated by a…
Why has V.S. Naipaul rejected the Trinidad of his birth?
Savi Naipaul Akal’s publishing house is named after the peepal tree, in whose shade Buddha is said to have achieved…
A review of debut novels — from Lisa Halliday, Margaret Wilkersen Sexton, Matthew Klam and Anbara Salam
Publication of a debut novel is an experience comparable with the birth of a first child. Literary gestation is normally…
The London painters that conquered the world
This is an important, authoritative work of art criticism that recognises schools of painters, yet displays the superior distinctions of…
A nightmare scenario in the city of dreaming spires
‘Dreaming spires’? Yes, but sometimes there are nightmares. Brian Martin, awarded the MBE for services to English literature, is at…
Corruption, corruption, corruption: the full story of Miami vice
Sullying the glorious sunshine, sand and sea, Miami in the 1940s, when I first ventured there, was already overcrowded, vulgar…
Harsh, but entertaining
When millionaires become billionaires they become even greedier and more ruthless. At the highest level, Trumpian economics can be lethal.…
'Wicked old Paris of the Orient': a portrait of 1930s Shanghai
Here’s the Mandarin for ooh-la-la! As Taras Grescoe, a respected Canadian writer of nonfiction, shows in this marvellous, microscopically descriptive…
Going ape with boredom in captivity
King Kong, the story of a violently amorous gorilla, Me Cheeta, the autobiography of a slanderous Hollywood chimpanzee, and now…
David Pryce-Jones settles old scores
The geological title of this unhappy memoir is an apt metaphor for fissures in the relationships between individuals of David…
An elegy for Concorde, the most beautiful airliner of all time
The Concorde experience, a fleeting indulgence in luxurious grandiosity, began each day with circumvention of the hugger-mugger of the hoi…
Woody Allen: a life of jazz, laughter, depression —and a few misdemeanours
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg), the prolific, Oscar-winning auteur, New Orleans-style jazz clarinettist, doyen of New York delicatessen society,…
Dennis Potter: one of the last great masters of vituperation
‘Genuine invective is an almost lost art in our wild satirical age,’ Dennis Potter complained in New Society in 1966.…
The smartphone is like having a singles bar in one’s pocket 24/7
An American stand-up comedian Aziz Ansari, who usually performs in Los Angeles and New York, has found time to conduct…
Back to Bedlam: Patrick Skene Catling on the book that makes madness visible
Madness is an ancient, evidently inscrutable mystery, often regarded with superstitious fear, yet can provide a refuge from reality. Sometimes,…
Blue Note's 75 years of hot jazz
This is a big book, a monumental text with 800 illustrations, 400 of them in colour, to be contemplated more…
