Lead book review

As special enclaves proliferate, what are the consequences for democracy?

1 April 2023 9:00 am

Zones of exception, freed from ordinary forms of regulation, are proliferating in bewildering varieties. Kwasi Kwarteng considers the consequences for democracy

The remarkable prescience of Alexis de Tocqueville

25 March 2023 9:00 am

Toby Young is struck by how prescient Tocqueville’s observations have proved on the social and political structures of the many countries he visited

The biography Noël Coward deserves

18 March 2023 9:00 am

Philip Hensher follows Noël Coward from precocious childhood to the vortex of fame

Is this the end of travel writing?

11 March 2023 9:00 am

Viv Groskop shares Sara Wheeler’s fears that modern sensibilities are fatally threatening a centuries-old genre

A radical new theory about the origin of the universe may help explain our existence

4 March 2023 9:00 am

Alexander Masters examines the top down cosmology proposed by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog

The world has become a toxic prison – and a volcanic winter lurks on the horizon

25 February 2023 9:00 am

Our own actions have created the toxic prison in which we now live, says Peter Frankopan, and the future looks terrifying. Adam Nicolson can only agree

What, if anything, unites Asia as a continent?

18 February 2023 9:00 am

Is it merely a European construct – and what, if anything, do its diverse peoples have in common, wonders Peter Frankopan

The nightmare continues

11 February 2023 9:00 am

The Cultural Revolution may have been officially forgotten, but it will always haunt Xinran and her generation

Has Salman Rushdie become his own pastiche?

4 February 2023 9:00 am

Salman Rushdie returns to India with a full-throated mix of history, magic realism and dazzling storytelling, says James Walton

Here be dragons, dog-headed men and women growing on trees

28 January 2023 9:00 am

Justin Marozzi celebrates the medieval naturalist Zakariyya Qazwini and his breathtaking bid to capture the marvels of creation

The radicals of 17th-century England began to think the unthinkable

18 January 2023 10:00 pm

Few periods match the British 17th century for turmoil and idealism.No wonder historians have repeatedly been drawn to it, says Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Spare reviewed: Harry is completely disingenuous – or an idiot

14 January 2023 9:00 am

What makes the Duke of Sussex believe he can lead a charge against practitioners of the written word, wonders Philip Hensher

The imaginative energy of Katherine Mansfield

7 January 2023 9:00 am

Claire Harman discusses ten of Mansfield’s short stories in connection with her tragically short life

The collectors’ obsession with rare medieval manuscripts

17 December 2022 9:00 am

Jonathan Sumption describes the age-old obsession of bibliophiles with acquiring rare illuminated manuscripts

Tales of old Hollywood are always entertaining – even when they’re apocryphal

10 December 2022 9:00 am

If the early days lacked glamour, they certainly provided the best anecdotes, according to a new oral history

Friedrich Hayek: a great political thinker rather than a great economist

3 December 2022 9:00 am

Robert Skidelsky follows Friedrich Hayek’s progression from technical economics to political thinking after his battles with John Maynard Keynes

Anne Glenconner: ‘I took my courage from Princess Margaret’  

26 November 2022 9:00 am

At times Anne Glenconner seems like a Craig Brown parody – but no, she really exists, and we must celebrate her, says Hermione Eyre

A sunken wreck of a novel: Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger reviewed

19 November 2022 9:00 am

A great talent is wasted in Cormac McCarthy’s meandering tale of a mysterious plane crash and its aftermath, says Philip Hensher

Books of the year II – chosen by our regular reviewers

12 November 2022 9:00 am

A further selection of recent books enjoyed by our regular reviewers – and a few that have disappointed them

Books of the Year I — chosen by our regular reviewers

5 November 2022 9:00 am

Our regular reviewers choose the books they have most enjoyed reading in 2022

Who needed who most? The complex bond between Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby

29 October 2022 9:00 am

Claudia FitzHerbert explores the complex bond between two remarkable writers in the interwar years

We love you, Uncle Xi!

22 October 2022 9:00 am

Tom Miller on the cult of personality that China’s ‘core leader’ has so ruthlessly constructed

A complex, driven, unhappy man: the truth about John le Carré

15 October 2022 9:00 am

Adam Sisman on the private life of John le Carré, revealed in letters and a kiss-and-tell

The lonely passions of Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan

8 October 2022 9:00 am

Tom Williams describes how two women’s hopes of marrying T.S. Eliot came to nothing

The unpleasant truth about Joseph Roth

1 October 2022 9:00 am

The Radetzky March must be one of the dozen greatest European novels – but its author was frighteningly unpleasant, says Philip Hensher