Biography
The conman who duped thousands with a patently absurd story
Promising his investors dazzling riches with his tale of hidden Ghanaian gold, the charismatic John Ackah Blay-Miezah pulled off one of the most brazen scams of the past century
Complicated and slightly creepy: the Bogart-Bacall romance
Lauren Bacall was 25 years younger than Humphrey Bogart. Unlike his previous wives, she stayed – though Roger Lewis finds something creepy about their relationship
Going for broke
The founding member of the Small Faces was playing an instrument from the age of six, but was forever haunted by the fear of MS, the inherited disease which eventually killed him
George Orwell’s unacknowledged debt to his wife Eileen
Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s creative influence on her husband George Orwell has been ignored for far too long, says Marina Benjamin
Four disparate intellectuals
Of Wolfram Eilenberger’s four intellectual heroines, Simone Weil alone really counts as a ‘visionary’, forsaking philosophy for a kind of saintly mysticism
Albrecht Dürer’s genius for self-promotion
Albrecht Dürer was an undoubted genius – and no one was more conscious of it than the artist himself, says Philip Hoare
The Teutonic goddess who ‘created’ the Rolling Stones
Of the Stones’ talented wives and girlfriends, Anita Pallenberg contributed most, dictating the band’s style and even how they should remix tracks
Why did Truman Capote betray his ‘swans’ so cruelly?
In an effort to arrest his slide into middle-aged bloat, he attempted a ‘Proustian’ novel, but spilling the secrets of the women he claimed to love was social suicide
A Blakean heaven or hell: fish with coloured lanterns and teeth like primeval beasts
On 11 June 1930, William Beebe and Otis Barton descended into the Caribbean depths to glimpse a world no man had seen before
Barbara Ker-Seymer – Bright Young Person in the shadows
Though she photographed many society figures of the 1930s, Ker-Seymer lacked ambition and remains largely unknown – as she herself seems to have wanted
The woman who put the Spencer family on the map
Born in 1559, Alice Spencer, a formidable networker, matchmaker and patron of the arts, was the muse of poets including Edmund Spenser and John Milton
Fame came too late for Nick Drake
The singer-songwriter deserved to be far better known in his lifetime – but reticence and mental illness contributed to his tragically early death in 1974
The philosophical puzzles of the British Socrates
After vital work for British intelligence during the second world war, why did J.L. Austin devote the rest of his life to considering literally asinine questions?
Between woods and water
Patrick Barkham pays tribute to the much-missed nature writer, whose core response to the call of the wild animated everything he did
The problems of being a Bee Gee
Calling themselves the Bee Gees spelt trouble from the start for the very disparate Gibb brothers, says Craig Brown
Will we ever know the real George Orwell?
D.J. Taylor explores how the fracture between the person Orwell wanted to be and the person he seemed to be runs through his life and work
Haunted by Old Russia: Rachmaninoff’s lonely final years
Exiled from Russia and often denigrated in America, Rachmaninoff lived in a fug of unbearable, impenetrable sadness, says Paul Kildea
From she-devil to heroine – Winnie Mandela’s surprising metamorphosis
Jonny Steinberg describes Nelson and Winnie’s doomed marriage, and how their posthumous reputations have undergone a startling reversal
A born rebel: Lady Caroline Lamb scandalises society
Antonia Fraser describes an intelligent, independent woman, whose penchant for cross-dressing reflected her yearning for the freedom only men enjoyed
Jim Ede and the glories of Kettle’s Yard
Honor Clerk celebrates Jim Ede and his matchless collection at Kettle’s Yard
What Zelensky has taken from his former TV career
Volodymyr Zelensky is one of the few leaders of modern times whose charisma, determination and sheer cojones can be said,…
We love you, Uncle Xi!
Tom Miller on the cult of personality that China’s ‘core leader’ has so ruthlessly constructed
The lonely passions of Emily Hale and Mary Trevelyan
Tom Williams describes how two women’s hopes of marrying T.S. Eliot came to nothing
Jan Morris’s ‘national treasure’ status is misleading
Almost two years after the death of Jan Morris, the jaunty travel writer and pioneer of modern gender transition, her…
The mad, bad and dangerous theories of Thomas Henry Huxley
Racism lies at the heart of the Victorian rewrite of the creation myth. What happened in prehistory, according to Thomas…
