Books

Alexandra’s Fuller’s parents are the stars even when their daughter is divorcing, in this sequel to the bestselling Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

21 February 2015 9:00 am

‘Double ouzo, hold the Coke,’ Mum ordered at the Mkushi Country Club bar, during spanikopita night. ‘My daughter’s a lesbian.’…

‘Baby asleep’, 1904, by Sir Jacob Epstein

Books & Arts opener

21 February 2015 9:00 am

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Roman mosaic from Pompeii depicting Darius III at the Battle of Issus (333 BC), in which he was defeated by Alexander the Great

Darius III: Alexander’s stooge

14 February 2015 9:00 am

The ‘Great Kings’ of Persia were renowned for their good looks and imposing stature, but they will always, throughout history, be eclipsed by the Greeks, says Tom Holland

They sought paradise in a Scottish field — and found hunger, boredom and mosquitoes

14 February 2015 9:00 am

Dylan Evans, the author of this book, was one of those oddballs who rather looked forward to the apocalypse, because…

Cybersex is a dangerous world (especially for novelists)

14 February 2015 9:00 am

Few first novels are as successful as S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which married a startling and unusual…

Still life in the old slogan: Maurice Saatchi’s famous 1978 poster was adapted three decades later when the unemployment figures were announced in March 2009

Even the people who make political adverts aren’t sure they work

14 February 2015 9:00 am

It is a common prejudice about modern politics that it is all focus groups and spin, all public relations and…

Anne Tyler’s everyday passions

14 February 2015 9:00 am

There was nothing remarkable about the Whitshanks. None of them was famous. None of them could claim exceptional intelligence, and…

Admiral Dönitz, left in charge of the Reich after Hitler’s suicide, was lucky to have escaped the noose at Nuremberg

The madness of Nazism laid bare

14 February 2015 9:00 am

‘If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me if the people perish in it.’ Bruno…

How Putin turned Russian politics into reality TV

14 February 2015 9:00 am

‘We all know there will be no real politics.’ A prominent Russian TV presenter is speaking off the record at…

Results

14 February 2015 9:00 am

The school holidays in the final furlong and the next new phase and term in clear sight. This is when…

‘The Diggers’ (after Jean-François Millet), 1889, by Vincent Van Gogh

Books & Arts opener

14 February 2015 9:00 am

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Results

12 February 2015 3:00 pm

The school holidays in the final furlong and the next new phase and term in clear sight. This is when…

Results

12 February 2015 3:00 pm

The school holidays in the final furlong and the next new phase and term in clear sight. This is when…

John Galliano at Paris Fashion Week 2010

Drink, drugs and dressing-up: behind the scenes of the fashion industry

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Philip Hensher explores a dangerously intoxicating world, and discovers just how quickly famous designers can become an irrelevance

The low sculduggery of high Victorian finance

7 February 2015 9:00 am

The whole idea of capitalism, according to Enlightenment philosophers, was that it created a positive spiral of moral behaviour. ‘Concern…

The Sixtus V cabinet: the supreme example of the art of pietra dura

Cabinet of curiosity: we do not even know for sure the maker of the Sixtus Cabinet at Stourhead

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Italian cabinets and tables decorated with inlaid semi-precious stones known as ‘pietre dure’ were a ‘must-have’ for English milords returning…

‘Chelsea pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch’ by Sir David Wilkie

From prince to pauper: a dramatic overview of Britain on 18 June 1815

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Of all the big battalions of books marking the bicentenary of the battle of Waterloo that have come my way,…

Tony Judt: a man of paradox who made perfect sense

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Tony Judt was not only a great historian, he was also a great essayist and commentator on international politics. Few…

The fallen idol: seeing Putin in a new light

7 February 2015 9:00 am

The way to think about Russia, Bill Browder told me in Moscow in 2004, using a comparison he recycles in…

Yoko Ono performing ‘Cut Piece’, where her outfit is cut down to her underwear by predatory snipping scissors

From classical to post-modern: a beginner’s guide

7 February 2015 9:00 am

My career at school and after was greatly enhanced by a series of books called The Bluffer’s Guide to….These gave…

Nicole Minetti (with statutory sunglasses) in Milan in 2011. The bunga-bunga girl, catapulted into politics by Berlusconi, was accused of aiding and abetting prostitution and submitting fraudulent expenses

Good time girls: Italian women prefer sunglasses to babies, according to Nicholas Farrell

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Like so many Britons who chased the dream and woke up in Italy I have contemplated writing a book about…

The greatest American Arctic disaster

7 February 2015 9:00 am

In the course of the 19th century, various flotillas of expeditions hastened to the polar regions in little wooden ships…

Powers of persuasion: how Churchill brought America on side

7 February 2015 9:00 am

In time for the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death comes this pacy novel about his attempts to persuade the Americans…

Approaching America

7 February 2015 9:00 am

Our pilot on the Delaware offers to show you his laptop. These are the buoys, he says; I know exactly…

‘Amy — Blue’, 2011, by Marlene Dumas

Books and arts

7 February 2015 9:00 am

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