Books
Bebop, swing and all that jazz
I can still remember the first time I heard big band jazz. I was in my twenties (too long ago!)…
The good old ways: nature’s best chance of recovery
Traditional agricultural methods still operating in pockets of Europe maintain an enviable balance of ecology and economy and an extraordinary diversity of wildlife
Disgusted of academia: a university lecturer bewails his lot
The anonymous professor rails against politicians, administrators, colleagues and students who consistently fall short of his ethical and intellectual standards
Kapows and wisecracks: Fight Me, by Austin Grossman, reviewed
A mild-manned academic with special powers joins forces with three similarly gifted friends to defeat the Dark Adversary, Sinistro
At last we see Henry VIII’s wives as individuals
Specialist knowledge of Tudor portraiture, book bindings, music and jewellery enables us to see each woman anew, possessed of a distinct life and afterlife
Jam-packed with treasures: the eccentric Sir John Soane’s Museum
The delightfully higgledy-piggledy display of antiquities, filling walls from floor to ceiling, may have been inspired by the Piranesi prints Soane also collected
The sheer drudgery of professional tennis
The most surprising thing about Conor Niland’s bruising account of his tennis career is that he emerges with his sanity intact
The costly legacy of Margaret Thatcher’s monetarism
As Thatcher’s economic private secretary in the first years of her government, Tim Lankester is well qualified to analyse the controversial policy and its effects
Those magnificent men and their stargazing machines
Violet Moller focuses on three 16th-century‘heroes of science’, John Dee, Nicolaus Copernicus and Tycho Brahe, and their great libraries and observatories
A Native American tragedy: Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange, reviewed
Shocked to find that his Cheyenne forebears had been imprisoned in Florida, Orange was inspired to write a story of displacement and abuse spanning generations
The ordeal of sitting for my father Lucian Freud
Rose Boyt describes posing naked over many nights – supplied with purple hearts by Freud to keep her awake – and her shock on finally seeing the result
Why must we be in constant battle with the ocean?
As we continue to fill the depths with plastic and radioactive waste, our coastlines are increasingly battered by tsunamis and erosion
‘A group of deranged idiots’ – how the Soviets saw the Avant-Gardists
First welcomed, then vilified, by Lenin, Russian artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky and Chagall would find their only real supporters in the West
Second life: Playboy, by Constance Debré, reviewed
Having abandoned her marriage and her career as a lawyer, Debré re-emerges as a lesbian, a writer, and a seducer equal to Casanova
Bayes’s Theorem: the mathematical formula that ‘explains the world’
An obscure 18th-century Presbyterian minister’s insights into statistics are still valued today in making strategic economic decisions and forecasts
Did the Duchess of Windsor fake the theft of her own jewels?
When Wallis’s jewellery collection disappeared from under the bed one night in Surrey in 1946, was this a misfortune, or carelessness, or planned fraud?
When Stalin was the lesser of two evils
Churchill detested Stalin, but Britain and the US needed his help against an even worse enemy. Giles Milton reveals the true nature of the Big Three’s dysfunctional relationship
Haunted by the past: Winterberg’s Last Journey, by Jaroslav Rudis, reviewed
A garrulous nonagenarian and his patient carer make a long train trip to Sarajevo, hoping to solve a decades-old murder mystery
China’s role in Soviet policy-making
Stalin and his successors’ struggle with the US and China reflected conflicting Soviet ambitions to be a superpower and to lead world revolution, says Sergey Radchenko
A tragedy waiting to happen: Tiananmen Square, by Lai Wen, reviewed
A moving coming-of-age novel sees a shy, introverted girl finding friends and freedom at Beijing university – until the authorities begin their murderous clamp-down
Heroines of antiquity – from Minoan Crete to Boudica’s Britain
Daisy Dunn’s ‘history of antiquity written through women’ includes warrior princesses, scheming matriarchs, poets, priestesses and tragic nymphs