Lead book review
Michelle Obama: ‘I was happy that Barack’s career came first’
‘To me, he was sort of like a unicorn,’ writes Mrs Obama, looking back on her courtship days with Barack.…
Books of the year – part two
Daniel Swift I feel as though I came late to the Sarah Moss party. Nobody told me she was this…
Books of the year – part one
Andrew Motion Short stories seem to fare better in the US than the UK, and among this year’s rich crop,…
Germaine Greer continues to shock and awe
There is an African bird called the ox-pecker with which Germaine Greer, conversant as she is with the natural world,…
A little of Philip Larkin’s letters goes a long way
On 13 September 1964, at the age of 42, Philip Larkin began writing to his mother Eva (his ‘very dear…
Whatever America is searching for, Trump isn’t providing it
Donald J. Trump has sparked some soul- searching among US historians: has this happened before? Does it mean America has…
Lonely hearts and guilty minds: the world of Pamela Hansford Johnson
The revival of interest in mid-20th century novelists is one of the most positive and valuable developments of our time.…
![Giving the famous V-sign at the opening of RAAF headquarters, Croydon, 1948 [Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/churchill.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Andrew Roberts’s generous new biography of the man who saved us in our darkest hour, Churchill reviewed
Churchill must be the most written-about figure in public life since Napoleon Bonaparte (a subject, incidentally, to which Andrew Roberts…
Nietzsche’s intense friendship with Wagner forms the core of Sue Prideaux’s excellent new biography
In 1945, with the second world war won bar the shouting, Bertrand Russell polished off his brief examination of Friedrich…
Helen Parr’s intimate portrait of the Parachute Regiment – Our Boys – captures the essence of modern Britain
On the night of 13 June 1982, Dave Parr was hit by shellfire on Wireless Ridge. He was 19, a…
Handel’s greatest hits — the glorious London decades
England has been home to three great composer-entrepreneurs since 1700: Benjamin Britten in the 20th century; Arthur Sullivan in the…
John Law: the Scottish gambler who rescued France from bankruptcy
John Law was by any standards a quite remarkable man. At the apogee of his power in 1720, he was…
The scourge of Christian missionaries in British-Indian history
Objectivity seems to be difficult for historians writing about Britain’s long and complicated relationship with India, and this makes the…
How scary is dairy?
For tens of thousands of years, humans have been domesticating other mammals — cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats, camels, llamas, donkeys,…
Ménage à quatre with Robert Graves
‘I have a very poor opinion of other people’s opinion of me — though I am fairly happy in my…
The perfect guide to a book everyone should read
‘The Divine Comedy is a book that everyone ought to read,’ according to Jorge Luis Borges, and every Italian has…
![Photograph of an almshouse waif by Lewis W. Hine, entitled ‘Little Orphan Annie in a Pittsburg Institution’ (1909) [Bridgeman Art Library]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bookslead4aug.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
‘I am not a number’: the callous treatment of orphans
Orphans are everywhere in literature — Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Oliver Twist, Daniel Deronda, and onwards to the present day. They…
Amazing mazes: the pleasures of getting lost in the labyrinth
When Boris Johnson resigned recently he automatically gave up his right to use Chevening House in Kent, bequeathed by the…
Adam Smith analysed human behaviour, not economics, says Simon Heffer
Jesse Norman is one of only three or four genuine intellectuals on the Tory benches in the House of Commons.…
Portugal’s entrancing capital has always looked to the sea
Paris, Venice, Montevideo, Cape Town, Hobart. There are cities, like fado, that pluck at the gut. In my personal half…
Historian David Edgerton says the ‘British nation’ lasted from 1945 to 1979, the miner’s strike its death knell
It seems somehow symptomatic of David Edgerton’s style as a historian, of a certain wilful singularity, that even his book’s…
The spying game: when has espionage changed the course of history?
Espionage, Christopher Andrew reminds us, is the second oldest profession. The two converged when Moses’s successor Joshua sent a couple…
The short step from good manners to lofty imperialism
In the gap between what we feel ourselves to be and what we imagine we might in different circumstances become,…
It took a long time for de Gaulle to become ‘de Gaulle’
When General de Gaulle published the first volume of his war memoirs in 1954, he signed only four presentation copies:…
Was the Indian Rope Trick a myth?
The Paul Daniels Magic Show, on a Saturday afternoon in the early 1980s, was a straightforward enough proposition. A wand,…
