Books
Richard III: a bad man — and even worse king
When archaeologists unearthed the battered mortal remains of King Richard III beneath a council car park in Leicester in 2012,…
Shakespeare with or without the waffle
30-Second Shakespeare: 50 key aspects of his works, life and legacy, each explained in half a minute sounds trivial, but…
James Klugmann and Guy Burgess: the wasted lives of spies
Geoff Andrews’s ‘Shadow Man’, James Klugmann, was the talent-spotter, recruiter and mentor of the Cambridge spy ring. From 1962, aged…
The real gardeners’ questions answered
Why is it that gardening in the public prints is so often treated as a fluffy subject for fluffy people?…
Schubert’s Lieder as never before
There can be no good reason why Graham Johnson’s marvellous three-volume encyclopaedia of Schubert’s songs has been so neglected by…
The Maldives: sun, sand and fanaticism
Suddenly, the Maldivians are in the news. Earlier this year, they locked up their first democratically elected president, and just…
Was King James I murdered or merely poisoned in error?
Beware hedonists bearing white powder. This, in part, was the message pressed in a short book about the excesses of…
The loneliness of Katherine Carlyle
‘Mystery comes through clarity’, is how Rupert Thomson recently described the effect he was trying to achieve in writing. It’s…
Victorian prime ministers and the press
Lord Palmerston is remembered today not for his foreign policy nor for his octogenarian philandering, but for his management of…
Homage to the Poet Laureate
These Collected Poems, published halfway through Carol Ann Duffy’s time as poet laureate, make clear that she is a true…
Count Dracula wasn’t always the vampire of choice
Nowadays a vampire is usually a Transylvanian in need of an orthodontist. But, as Nick Rennison demonstrates in this entertaining…
Bequest
Knowing he was ill he offered a free choice of the books on his shelves, but for every one wanted…
Heron
Walking to the bus stop after a hospital visit, in an unfamiliar, dusty suburb, I pass a small park on…
Bequest
Knowing he was ill he offered a free choice of the books on his shelves, but for every one wanted…
Heron
Walking to the bus stop after a hospital visit, in an unfamiliar, dusty suburb, I pass a small park on…
Bequest
Knowing he was ill he offered a free choice of the books on his shelves, but for every one wanted…
Heron
Walking to the bus stop after a hospital visit, in an unfamiliar, dusty suburb, I pass a small park on…
The four men who averted the Apocalypse
Robert Service’s account of the greatest turning point in modern history is unlikely to be bettered, says Sherard Cowper-Coles
Erica Jong's middle-aged dread
Who’d get old? Bits fall off, your loved ones start dropping like flies and, perhaps worst of all, the only…
Everything you always wanted to know about Sixties pop —and more
It might seem an odd choice, but after reading Jon Savage’s new book, I think if I had a time…
From cave painting to Maggi Hambling: the best Christmas art books
It’s been a memorably productive year for art books (I have published a couple myself), but certain volumes stand out.…
K2’s fatal attraction
Take one drug-addled occultist, one forlorn aristocrat, an assortment of urgent colonials and you have, no, not the western canon…
The best children’s authors of 2015 — after David Walliams
The easy way round buying books for children at Christmas is just to get them the latest David Walliams and…
The best short story collections — from childish gabbling to jaded nihilism
Anyone who enjoyed Ali Smith’s novel How to be Both, with its charmingly loopy monologue of an Italian Renaissance painter…
Treasure
Walking down the sands to investigate what they might find, shells or stones, flotsam pieces abandoned by tides, two figures…
