Biography
How can a biography of Woody Allen be so unbearably dull?
Only after 300-plus pages of tedious filmography do we finally get to the rift with Mia Farrow and the family scandals that have dogged Allen ever since
Why were the security services so obsessed with the Marxist historian Christopher Hill?
MI5 and Special Branch intercepted Hill’s mail for decades, but the former Master of Balliol was an impartial teacher and certainly no Soviet agent
The supreme conjuror Charles Dickens weaves his magic spell
Peter Conrad reminds us how the skilled stage performer, always yearning for enchantment, even introduced a few disguised magic tricks into his fiction
In search of Pico della Mirandola, the quintessential Renaissance Man
Though the scholar himself remains an enigma, his theories about language as a portal to the divine are explored in depth by Edward Wilson-Lee
The plain-speaking bloke from Warrington who painted only for himself
Born in 1932, Eric Tucker created his art not for exhibition or in pursuit of fame but simply because he felt compelled to do so
The secret of Gary Lineker’s success
The Leicester-born striker was neither exceptionally skilful nor assiduous; but he worked out how to score goals, and later excel in broadcasting, through intelligence and calm resilience
The splatter of green and yellow that caused uproar in the Victorian art world
A double biography of John Ruskin and James Whistler describes in detail the notorious feud between the prominent critic and the flamboyant post-Impressionist
Once upon a time in Germany: the Grimms’ legacy of revenge and gory redemption
The Household Tales only attained their standing after the brothers’ death, with the unification of Germany and the decades of nationalism that led to catastrophe
‘The wickedest man in Europe’ was just an intellectual provocateur
Sir Bernard Mandeville certainly revelled in mischief-making; but his one simple idea – that human beings are animals – seems unremarkable today
When will Ronald Reagan get the recognition he deserves?
Max Boot’s contention that Reagan was a lightweight pragmatist who played little part in reviving America or winning the Cold War is absurdly revisionist
Thomas Kyd may have delighted Elizabethan audiences, but he still wasn’t a patch on Shakespeare
Brian Vickers aims to ‘restore’ Kyd to greatness – but claiming too much on too little evidence does the playwright no favours
The mythic mishmash of Wagner’s Ring
Its towering themes of gods, giants, dragons and magic were not purely Germanic in origin, whatever fever-dream they later conjured in Hitler’s brain
A rare combination of humour and pathos: the sublimely talented Neil Innes
The musician and parodist, whose mantra was ‘not to say no when there’s a way to say yes’, had a gift for creating happiness in private as well as public, as his widow poignantly attests
The chilly charm of Clarissa Eden
Glamorous, enigmatic and well read, Anthony Eden’s wife was a discreet but unmistakable influence in Downing Street in the mid-1950s
The fresh hell of Dorothy Parker’s Hollywood
Though well paid as a screenwriter, Parker lampooned Hollywood’s moguls, dubbing MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Merde as she slipped further into alcoholism
The ambassador’s daughter bent on betrayal
When the young Martha Dodd arrived at the American embassy in Berlin in 1933 she cared nothing about politics. By the time she left four years later, she was a committed Soviet spy
‘Life was good, very good, almost too good’ – Wallis Simpson’s year in China
Arriving in Shanghai in the summer of 1924, the elegant 28-year-old embarked on a busy but harmless life of pleasure which would later be cast as a wild debauch
Kate Bush – always quite hippy, dippy, ‘out there’
With Bush, the unexpected is about the only certainty, having the bravado to do what she wants rather than pandering to the public’s longing for hits
Saint Joan and saucy Eve: a single woman split in two
The relationship between Joan Didion and Eve Babitz is memorably captured in Lily Anolik’s red-hot, propulsive portrait of two warring writers who were once close friends
The many passions of Ronald Blythe
Some he kept hidden, such as his affairs with soldiers in the second world war, but his love of nature, literature, naked sunbathing and moonlit bicycling are all well-attested
You didn’t mess with them – the doughty matriarchs of the intelligence world
Claire Hubbard-Hall pays tribute to the legions of women who devoted their lives to the British secret service but whose efforts went largely unacknowledged
‘I like it when my pupils run the world’: a celebration of Jeremy Catto
The convivial Oxford don who died in 2018 is remembered by his many devoted students, who include bankers, barristers, diplomats and politicians as well as other distinguished historians
The enduring mystery of Goethe’s Faust
A.N. Wilson has never been afraid of big subjects. His previous books have tackled the Victorians, Charles Dickens, Dante, Jesus…
The stark, frugal world of Piet Mondrian
In September 1940 the Dutch abstract artist Piet Mondrian arrived in New York, a refugee from war and the London…
The journalist’s journalist: the irrepressible Claud Cockburn
After a distinguished spell on the Times, Cockburn launched The Week in 1933, whose scoops on Nazi Germany became essential reading for politicians, diplomats and journalists alike
