Books
Is this the end of travel writing?
Viv Groskop shares Sara Wheeler’s fears that modern sensibilities are fatally threatening a centuries-old genre
His own best creation
Once a beacon at events with his sunglasses and white ponytail, the designer who revived many failing fashion houses has left nothing of himself behind
A passion for painting at the early Stuart courts
Charles I’s patronage of the arts, in particular, inspired his courtiers to commission their own family portraits and spend fortunes on acquiring Venetian masterpieces
Inside the Factory
When two teenage typists employed by Andy Warhol start tagging along to his amphetamine-fuelled parties, their lives spiral out of control
Why Anaximander deserves to be called ‘the first scientist’
A mere fragment survives of the Greek philosopher’s work, but other sources attest to his bold ideas about the universe, human evolution and the weather
Ghosts of the past
Painful memories resurface for a retired detective when his help is sought with a cold case murder
There’s nothing ‘magical’ about a great theatrical performance
The actors who appear to be doing nothing are now the ones most revered – but acting is natural, says David Thomson: it’s what we all do all the time
The battle for the Nile
The explorers’ journey to solve the great geographical puzzle of the Victorian age, and the bad blood it resulted in, is described in gripping detail by Candice Millard
A modern witch-hunt
For centuries, elderly women have been scorned as crones, hags and scolds – but it’s not only men who are belittling them now, says Victoria Smith
A radical new theory about the origin of the universe may help explain our existence
Alexander Masters examines the top down cosmology proposed by Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog
Dismantling the Aboriginal industry
Integration into a wider society works. That is why Australia is one of the most successful countries on the planet.…
Sisters in arms
‘I didn’t even want to go to Spain. I had to. Because’, said the American writer Josephine Herbst – just one of the sisterhood to become immersed in the struggle
Poetry anthologies to treasure
Single volumes that fitted in a knapsack sustained many soldiers in the world wars, and have inspired countless schoolchildren to learn poems by heart
Why is Ukraine honouring the monsters of the past?
Bernard Wasserstein describes the dreadful fate of Jews in Krakowiec in the 1940s – and is astonished that a statue has been erected there to one of their chief persecutors
Living trees that predate the dinosaurs
The lifespans of cedars, oaks and yews are remarkable enough, but they pale in comparison to America’s bristlecone pines
Heroes and villeins
Chaucer’s motley crew help to encapsulate the richness and diversity of the late-medieval world and its growing literacy, says Ian Mortimer
The impossible subject
Two respected family men are each burdened by an unacceptable private life, in a debut novel based on the experiences of John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis
Opposites attract
A young guerrilla gardener and an American billionaire vie for a plot of land in New Zealand. Can they trust one another to reach an agreement?
Why are women composers still disregarded?
Leah Broad celebrates four pioneering musicians who battled male prejudice throughout the past century – yet the situation remains stubbornly unchanged
Strange noises from upstairs
Trapped abroad during lockdown, a lackadaisical reviewer is spurred to investigate the mysterious noises coming from the floor above his hotel suite
‘It felt like a piece of bad news I should pass on to someone else’ – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst on his MS diagnosis
In a powerful and ultimately heartening memoir, the Oxford professor describes being trapped in a mutinous body, and what it does to the spirit
The world has become a toxic prison – and a volcanic winter lurks on the horizon
Our own actions have created the toxic prison in which we now live, says Peter Frankopan, and the future looks terrifying. Adam Nicolson can only agree
Pico Iyer finds peace even in lost paradises
The novelist and travel writer reflects on the resilience of the human spirit in countries whose staggering beauty has largely been trashed
The triumphs and disasters of 1845
It was a year packed with drama – from the transatlantic crossing of the SS Great Britain to the start of the Irish potato blight that would leave millions starving
Fragments of a life: Janet Malcolm meditates on old family photographs
The biographer and journalist was always reluctant to write about herself, and this posthumously published memoir is hemmed in by what she kept locked away
