Biography
The visionary genius of Harold Wilson
‘Our generation owes an apology to the shades of Harold Wilson,’ the polling guru Peter Kellner once told me. Had…
The short-lived wonder of Creedence Clearwater Revival
Million-selling rock bands are rarely happy families. They are an uneasy combination of a creative alliance and a business partnership,…
Aleister Crowley was even more beastly than we’d imagined
I have never had much time for Aleister Crowley. Magic(k) is nonsense; the mystical societies he founded were simply pretexts…
Harpo Marx – genius, idiot savant or lovable overgrown child?
It’s hard (if not impossible) to imagine a world worth living in that doesn’t include the Marx Brothers; and equally…
In search of the peripatetic philosopher Theophrastus
Publishers lately seem to have got the idea that otherwise uncommercial subjects might be rendered sexy if presented with a…
Why was Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s beautiful wife, so reviled?
On 15 June 1645, as Thomas Fairfax’s soldiers picked over the scattered debris on the Naseby battlefield, they made a…
How Alice Prin conquered bohemian Paris
This book is about two people who reinvented themselves in 1920s Paris. Mark Braude focuses on Kiki de Montparnasse and…
Who planned Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson’s murder?
Until very recently, political assassination was a mercifully uncommon occurrence in British politics, though that has changed. Previously when such…
Homage to Sydney Kentridge, South Africa’s courtroom giant
Sydney Kentridge, the protagonist of Thomas Grant’s superb legal saga The Mandela Brief, is that trickiest of biographical subjects: a…
Lord Northcliffe’s war of words
Andrew Lycett on the pugnacious British press baron dedicated to fighting the first world war through newsprint
‘That little venal borough’: a poet’s jaundiced view of Aldeburgh
‘To talk about Crabbe is to talk about England,’ E.M. Forster declared in a radio broadcast in May 1941, but…
What shape is the Treasury in now?
Don’t bring a bottle. Your chances of finding a party in full swing down those chilly corridors are close to…
Is T.S. Eliot’s great aura fading?
Cracks are beginning to appear in T.S. Eliot’s once unassailable reputation, says Philip Hensher
The lonely genius of Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska was constantly undermined in her lifetime – most cruelly by her brother, says Sarah Crompton
Is Anna Wintour human?
Apparently Anna Wintour wants to be seen as human, and Amy Odell’s biography goes some way to helping her achieve…
Friend of Elizabethan exiles: the colourful life of Jane Dormer
Thomas Cromwell’s biographer Diarmaid MacCulloch once told me that my father’s family, the Dormers, had been servants of the great…
Gardening’s bad girl: the genius – and malice – of Ellen Willmott
In October 1897, the grandees of the Royal Horticultural Society gathered to bestow their highest award, the Victoria Medal of…
Disregarded for decades, Jean Rhys stayed true to her vision of life
Jean Rhys lived a vagabond life – but she wrote about gloom and squalor with luminous purity and a poet’s care, says Lucasta Miller
Is Mark Twain’s old age best forgotten?
Mark Twain conquered almost every challenge that came his way except old age. Living well into his seventies, he was…
Boris Iofan – cunning apparatchik of a loathsome regime
The invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces has rendered what might otherwise have seemed a fairly niche study of a…
The effortless magnetism of Marcel Duchamp
One could compile a fat anthology of tributes to Marcel Duchamp’s charm – especially what one friend called the artist’s…
Nymphomaniac, fearless campaigner, alcoholic – Nancy Cunard was all this and more
Nancy Cunard’s defiance of convention began early, fuelled by bitter resentment towards her mother, says Jane Ridley
Stewart Brand: man of ideas and infuriating contrarian
In his 2005 book What The Dormouse Said John Markoff traced the roots of the personal computer industry to the…
Arnold Bennett’s success made him loathed by other writers
Virginia Woolf admitted to her journal: ‘I haven’t that reality gift.’ Her contemporary Arnold Bennett had it in spades. He…
Four difficult women who fought to preserve the English countryside
One thing that Covid lockdown made us appreciate was the importance of being outdoors. When we were finally allowed into…
