Lead book review

The tyranny of 1970s self-help gurus

16 March 2024 9:00 am

Clients pursuing ’true self’ were expected to wear identical clothes, shave their heads, self-flagellate and be ‘given hell’, while paying through the nose for it

Before the Blitz: the dynamism of British architecture

9 March 2024 9:00 am

Many competing styles flourished in the interwar years, including functionalism, art deco, neoclassicism, seaside moderne, mock-Mayan and Egyptian revivalism

Four months adrift in the Pacific: a couple’s extraordinary feat of endurance

2 March 2024 9:00 am

When a freak occurrence wrecked the Baileys’ sloop 300 miles from the Galapagos, their chances of rescue were minimal – and one of them couldn’t even swim

Lord Byron had many faults, but writing dull letters wasn’t one of them

17 February 2024 9:00 am

Andrew Stauffer traces the poet’s tumultuous life through some of the most remarkable missives in the English language

The greed and hypocrisy of the opium trade continue to shock

10 February 2024 9:00 am

Amitav Ghosh admits he found writing his history difficult because of the obscene profiteering and suffering he had to cover

A wealth of knowledge salvaged from shipwrecks

3 February 2024 9:00 am

Goods found on board can illuminate trade routes and global connections, often going back thousands of years, in ways no other archaeological sites can

The problem with westerners seeking oriental enlightenment

27 January 2024 9:00 am

Those chasing after blissful satori never seem interested in the people who actually live in Asia. They want to float in higher spheres

Have we all become more paranoid since the pandemic?

20 January 2024 9:00 am

Covid-19 proved devastating to our self-confidence and faith in others, says Daniel Freeman, who describes the ‘corrosive’ effects of mistrust on individuals and society

The travails of Britain’s first Labour government

13 January 2024 9:00 am

Attacked in the press, by the right and even by its own supporters, Ramsay MacDonald’s short-lived government still managed to achieve a surprising amount

The freedom fighters who dared to take on a communist superpower

6 January 2024 9:00 am

Shibani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin describe the courage of the youthful protest leaders in Hong Kong who sacrificed so much for the cause of democracy

Will the Caucasus ever be tamed?

16 December 2023 9:00 am

Its ruined fortresses, broken monasteries and deserted villages attest to centuries of conflict, and any idea of a united Caucasus remains a dream, says Christoph Baumer

The splendour and squalor of Venice

9 December 2023 9:00 am

In his celebration of Venetian art, Martin Gayford is keenly alert to the city’s spectacular contradictions

The British Empire’s latest crime – to have ended the Enlightenment

2 December 2023 9:00 am

Richard Whatmore sees trade and colonisation in the 19th century as the great threat to Enlightenment ideals, and British imperialism as an unremitting force of darkness

Surreal visions: the best of this year’s art books reviewed

25 November 2023 9:00 am

Subjects include Anna Atkins’s cyanotypes, Leonora Carrington’s paintings, Albrecht Dürer’s dreams and the photographs of Lee Miller

Was there ever a time of equality in human society?

18 November 2023 9:00 am

Living in open savannahs, men and women had no choice but to cooperate. But evolution caused men to fight and dominate, resulting in sexism and social hierarchy

Books of the year II: more choices of reading in 2023

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Recommendations from Mary Beard, Richard Ingrams, Sam Leith, Francis Wheen, Michela Wrong, William Dalrymple and many more

Why did Jon Fosse win the Nobel Prize for literature? It’s baffling.

4 November 2023 9:00 am

If Jon Fosse’s novels are experimental, they are experiments in exhausting banality, says Philip Hensher

Was the French Revolution inevitable?

28 October 2023 9:00 am

It was clear for decades in France that unrest was steadily building before public anger finally exploded in the spring of 1789, says Ruth Scurr

The mystery of Werner Herzog

21 October 2023 9:00 am

The film director treats us to a dervish dance of anecdotes but still keeps his real life secret, says Peter Bradshaw

Seamus Heaney’s letters confirm that he really was as nice as he seemed

14 October 2023 9:00 am

Seamus Heaney’s letters are full of energy and joie de vivre, but a darker note persists as the pressure of celebrity grows, says Roy Foster

Learned necromancers and lascivious witches: magic and misogyny through the ages

7 October 2023 9:00 am

We seem just as captivated by magic today as our Sumerian ancestors ever were, says Suzi Feay

The astonishing truth about 007

30 September 2023 9:00 am

The world would never be quite the same again after we first glimpsed the casino of Royale-les-Eaux at three in the morning, says Philip Hensher

The bloody prequel: a triumphant new translation of the Iliad

23 September 2023 9:00 am

Following her translation of the Odyssey, Emily Wilson has turned her hand to the Iliad – and it is a triumph, writes A.E. Stallings

‘My attachment to Giacometti grew into the bedrock of my existence’

16 September 2023 9:00 am

Michael Peppiatt has had a lifelong obsession with Alberto Giacometti – and it shows in this perfect biography, says Lynn Barber