Books
Nursing grievances in the Crimean War
When Florence Nightingale was joined in Scutari by groups of volunteer nuns, tensions among them soon imperilled the entire female nursing experiment
How the Muppets went to Moscow as ambassadors for democracy
In 1993, Natasha Lance Rogoff was tasked with introducing the American puppets to Russia in the hope of cultivating peace, love and understanding
The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican
Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty’s thrilling mission to save the lives of 6,500 Jews and Allied soldiers in Nazi-occupied Rome doesn’t quite get the memorial it deserves
Butchered to make a Roman holiday: cruelty to animals in and out of the Colosseum
Brutality might be expected of a people who fed each other to lions – but it extended even to the elephants the Romans regarded as soulmates
A playful provocateur
The world-class musician describes his early desire to shock, his delight in the sensual, his life-changing relationship with Catholicism and, finally, his debut at Carnegie Hall
A bleak vision of adolescence: The Shards, by Bret Easton Ellis, reviewed
A group of privileged teenagers at Buckley School, Los Angeles medicate themselves on champagne, cocaine and mindless sex – until something awful happens
If Lady Mendl didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent her
The flamboyant hostess and ‘psychic’ interior decorator does seem like a comic creation – but she was real enough, and perhaps madder than Ludwig Bemelmans lets on
What the Wife of Bath teaches us about misogyny
The lovable rounded character of The Canterbury Tales has been ridiculed over the centuries for her sexual appetites, completely subverting Chaucer’s focus
Sharp practice
Thackeray’s amoral schemer is recast as a ruthless tabloid journalist, splashing gossip, hacking phones and pursuing personal vendettas
The best of liberal thought
Shocked by the authoritarianism of Cuba and the USSR, the Peruvian writer turned his back on communism in the 1960s, influenced by seven liberal European thinkers
Henri Christophe, King of Haiti, was not such a ridiculous figure
He certainly had delusions of grandeur, but his ambition to educate a people newly emerged from slavery showed a true visionary spirit
Day of vengeance
A festive gathering in the depths of rural France is fatally disrupted by a trio of sinister strangers
Allies, not friends
The initial reluctance of Britain, France, Poland and the US to share intelligence allowed the Nazis to hone their deception skills to early advantage
Here be dragons, dog-headed men and women growing on trees
Justin Marozzi celebrates the medieval naturalist Zakariyya Qazwini and his breathtaking bid to capture the marvels of creation
Was the closure of the grammar schools really such a tragedy?
Peter Hitchens is in no doubt that it was. But a dominant, self-perpetuating meritocratic elite, all head and no heart, might also have presented problems
Victorian science fiction soon ceased to be fanciful
Iwan Rhys Morus describes how novelists’ futuristic visions began to be realised by engineers – though the course of invention is more random than he imagines
Cakes and ale
There has never been a golden age or even a very stable one, says Diane Purkiss, in a serious consideration of how English food has changed over time
Women of no importance
From their brothels in lawless 1850s Monterrey, Eliza and Jean set out discover why their fellow workers are going missing
The radicals of 17th-century England began to think the unthinkable
Few periods match the British 17th century for turmoil and idealism.No wonder historians have repeatedly been drawn to it, says Lucy Hughes-Hallett
Sidney Reilly, Ace of Spies, remains an enigma
‘James Bond is just a piece of nonsense I dreamt up,’ the former naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming once said.…
Tears and laughter: We All Want Impossible Things, by Catherine Newman, reviewed
Edi is dying of ovarian cancer and she’s craving the lemon cake she once got from Dean & Deluca deli…
A treasury of wisdom about the writing life
In the penultimate entry of Toby Litt’s A Writer’s Diary, an autofictional daily record of a writer named Toby Litt…
What did indigenous Americans make of Europe?
The most influential Native American visitor to Europe in colonial times was a fiction. The protagonist of L’Ingénu, Voltaire’s novel…
Spare reviewed: Harry is completely disingenuous – or an idiot
What makes the Duke of Sussex believe he can lead a charge against practitioners of the written word, wonders Philip Hensher
The films of Quentin Tarantino’s childhood
The X-rated movies he’d seen by the age of ten included Deliverance, Taxi Driver and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – which he’d then discuss with his child psychologist
