Books
New ways to destroy the world
Despite the offer of joy proposed in the subtitle, this is a deeply troubling book by one of Britain’s foremost…
What’s wrong with the Victoria Cross
‘It is the task of a Patton or a Napoleon to persuade soldiers that bits of ribbon are intrinsically valuable.…
Bartók would have made history even if he’d never composed a note
‘All my life, always and in every way, I shall have one objective: the good of Hungary and the Hungarian…
Palermo: city of jasmine and dark secrets
The Arabs invaded Sicily in the ninth century, leaving behind mosques and pink-domed cupolas. In the Sicilian capital of Palermo,…
Encounters with the nastiest people on the internet
It is almost a century since the Michelin brothers had the brainwave of supplementing their motorists’ guide with information about…
Bond would be bored in today’s MI6, says Malcolm Rifkind
Spying may be one of the two oldest professions, but unlike the other one it has changed quite a lot…
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In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…
Books & arts
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In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…
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In eastern Congo years ago on a road logged into a hill I drove or was driven one evening to…
From Barbary corsairs to people-traffickers: the violence of the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean has always been central to European civilisation — and a source of drama and conflict, says Anthony Sattin
All might have been well had Nicholas II only listened to a tiny cosmopolitan elite
The veteran Russian historian Dominic Lieven’s new study of Russia’s descent towards the first world war is deeply researched, highly…
Fathers and sons — seen from multiple angles
‘People talk about their childhood and it’s so mundane. I don’t remember much about it, if I’m honest. I can’t…
Is Julian Barnes right to think Lucian Freud will survive? Jonathan Meades thinks not
The subject of the least characteristic essay in this engrossing collection of meditations on painters, painters’ lives, painting and reactions…
A kitchen-garden renaissance
Considerable areas of our memory are taken up with food: it might be the taste of Mother’s sponge, the melting…
White dwarfs and neutron stars — stepping-stones to the black hole
The idea of black holes sounds so quintessentially modern and 20th-century that it may come as a surprise to learn…
To Land’s End and beyond: footsore but bravely coasting along
It’s a real skill, writing about a journey where nothing ever happens. We shouldn’t be surprised that Simon Armitage is…
By, with, of and for Kim Kardashian — keeping up with Kulture
The almond eyes that rise towards their outer edges. The cheekbones that curve down to the corners of those upholstered…
Elizabeth Day urges women to be more ‘me first’, less ‘no, no, after you’
Paradise City, Elizabeth Day’s third novel, comes with an accompanying essay on The Pool — an online magazine for the…
The museum which once displayed Enver Hoxha’s pyjamas now houses a pro-democracy radio station
Albania is a small country of 2.7 million people, wedged within the Balkan peninsula. Separated from both Greece and Italy…
The toughest, smartest, strangest creatures ever to evolve are nearing the end of their continental shelf life
The rich, strange, finely balanced ecosystems of the oceans — on which our lives depend — are profoundly threatened, says Rose George
Terror Management Studies is a brand new area of research — and it’s not about IS or Boko Haram
This is not a book to be read in solitude. Not for the obvious reason that it’s frightening, but because…
The Mad Boy, Peter Watson, Cecil Beaton and the limo — by Sofka Zinovieff
It would not have surprised their friends in the 1930s when Peter Watson had a fling with my grandfather, Robert…
How 18th-century gardeners ordered their plants after a great storm, a terrible drought and ‘a little ice age’
I hesitate ever to criticise an author for the inappropriateness of a book’s title, since it’s more likely the fault…
Colonel Blood: thief turned spy and Royal pensioner
In the words of one of his contemporaries ‘a man of down look, lean-faced and full of pock holes’, the…
