Books

Illustration, from World War I in Cartoons, Mark Bryant, Grub Street.

The completely ludicrous – and sometimes believable – world of the First World War spook

12 July 2014 9:00 am

There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…

‘A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling’, c.1526–28, by Hans Holbein the Younger

Books and arts

12 July 2014 9:00 am

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Labor partisan’s economic tale

12 July 2014 9:00 am

The old saw about economics being a dismal science turns out, on the evidence of this short but interesting piece…

I, spy

10 July 2014 1:00 pm

There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…

My Grandmother Said

10 July 2014 1:00 pm

It was the First World War. Her husband was away. So she knew fear, but also found new freedom in…

Illustration, from World War I in Cartoons, Mark Bryant, Grub Street.

I, spy

10 July 2014 1:00 pm

There can’t have been this many books about the first world war since — just after the first world war.…

My Grandmother Said

10 July 2014 1:00 pm

It was the First World War. Her husband was away. So she knew fear, but also found new freedom in…

Doctor Zhivago's long, dark shadow

5 July 2014 9:00 am

The banning of Dr Zhivago in the Soviet Union had unfortunate consequences for other fine 20th-century Russian novels, says Robert Chandler

A coming of age novel? Or an age of coming novel?

5 July 2014 9:00 am

At a time when feminism is grimly engaged in disappearing up its own intersection (two transsexuals squabbling over a tampon…

Lillian Hellman lied her way through life

5 July 2014 9:00 am

Lillian Hellman must be a maddening subject for a biographer. The author Mary McCarthy’s remark that ‘every word she writes…

Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx with Jenny, Eleanor and Laura Marx, 1864

Caught between Marx and a monster

5 July 2014 9:00 am

‘Curious to see Mrs Aveling addressing the enormous crowd, curious to see the eyes of the women fixed upon her…

The soundtracked novel that won’t sit still

5 July 2014 9:00 am

The Emperor Waltz is long enough at 600 pages to be divided, in the old-fashioned way, into nine ‘books’. Each…

The cruellest present you could give a hated old in-law

5 July 2014 9:00 am

It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make drawings of your own 97-year-old mother on her…

Ursula, photographed by Cecil Beaton on the eve of the second world war

From Edwardian idyll to meetings with Nehru: the life of Lady Ursula D’Asbo

5 July 2014 9:00 am

This is the Real Thing, an evocative account of English upper-class life throughout the 20th century. It begins amidst the…

What are the Chinese up to in Africa?

5 July 2014 9:00 am

Few subjects generate as much angst, or puzzlement, among Western policymakers in Africa as China’s presence on the continent. In…

Books and arts

5 July 2014 9:00 am

Got something to add? Join the discussion and comment below.

Perils of activist judges

5 July 2014 9:00 am

Democracy in ancient Athens was often criticised by the aristocracy for not showing significant respect for them and their superior…

Portrait of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, with his pet monkey, attributed to Jacob Huysmans

Thug, rapist, poetic visionary: the contradictory Earl of Rochester

28 June 2014 9:00 am

Philip Hensher on the scandalous 17th-century courtier whose hellfire reputation has overshadowed his fine satirical poetry

Slaves planting cane cuttings in Antigua, 1823, by William Clark

Only tourists think of the Caribbean as a ‘paradise’

28 June 2014 9:00 am

A couple of years ago in Jamaica, I met Errol Flynn’s former wife, the screen actress Patrice Wymore. Reportedly a…

The cold, remote plateau of Vichy France where good was done

28 June 2014 9:00 am

It is with a heavy heart that I pick up anything to do with the Holocaust. Not because it’s wearisome…

Maigret's new clothes – this month's best new crime novel, published 1931

28 June 2014 9:00 am

The publisher has whipped up a tsunami of excitement around The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (translated from the…

Portrait of Dante by Domenico di Michelino

A divine guide to Dante

28 June 2014 9:00 am

Reading Dante is an experience of a lifetime. You never come to the end of it. But,  like Dante himself,…

Having a moral compass just gets in the way of being smart

28 June 2014 9:00 am

Steven D. Levitt was a Harvard economist who specialised in politics and spent a lot of time watching cop shows…

‘He thought he could have made it as a visual artist — if only more people had liked his work.’ Above: John Arlott reading (1977) and Kathy and Jessy (1963)

The gentle intoxications of Laurie Lee

28 June 2014 9:00 am

On Laurie Lee’s centenary, Jeremy Treglown wonders how the writer’s legacy stands up

Spoken For

28 June 2014 9:00 am

What I want to tell you is I can dream with my eyes wide open, like riding a bicycle without…