the first world war
War was never Sir Edward Grey’s métier
This meaty but easily digested biography pivots around the events either side of that fateful evening of 4 August 1914…
A brutal education: At Night All Blood is Black, by David Diop, reviewed
Alfa Ndiaye, a Senegalese soldier fighting for France in the trenches of the Great War, is consumed by bloodlust, which…
Never a dull sentence: the journalism of Harry Perry Robinson
Is Boris Johnson a fan of Harry Perry Robinson? If he isn’t, he really ought to be. Reading this absorbing…
Ménage à quatre with Robert Graves
‘I have a very poor opinion of other people’s opinion of me — though I am fairly happy in my…
Sexual tension and Siberian magic mushrooms
On her arrival in Russia in 1914, Gerty Freely finds it refreshingly liberal compared to her native Britain: here servants…
T.E. Lawrence: from young romantic to shame-shattered veteran
T.E. Lawrence is seen as a ‘metaphor for imperialism, violence and betrayal’ in the Middle East. But woeful Arab leadership has also been to blame for the region’s problems, says Justin Marozzi
A fairytale return for Graham Swift
The opening of Graham Swift’s new novel clearly signals his intent. ‘Once upon a time’ tells us that this will…
Rex Whistler: ‘a desolate sense of loneliness amidst so much fun’
When Hugh and Mirabel Cecil’s book In Search of Rex Whistler was published in 2012, the late Brian Sewell reviewed…
What drove Europe into two world wars?
Sir Ian Kershaw won his knight’s spurs as a historian with his much acclaimed two-volume biography of Hitler, Hubris and…
Sebastian Faulks returns to the psychiatrist’s chair in Where My Heart Used to Beat
There can hardly be two novelists less alike than Sebastian Faulks and Will Self, in style and in content. Faulks…
The British army’s greatest catastrophe — and its most valuable lesson
Peter Parker spends 24 hours on the bloodsoaked battlefield of the Somme, scene of the British army’s greatest catastrophe
The honour of the Habsburgs was all that mattered to the imperial Austrian army
John Keegan, perhaps the greatest British military historian of recent years, felt that the most important book (because of its…
Edward Thomas: the prolific hack (who wrote a book review every three days for 14 years) turned to poetry just in time
Edward Thomas was gloomy as Eeyore. In 1906 he complained to a friend that his writing ‘was suffering more &…
Carnage on the home front: revisiting a forgotten disaster of the first world war
Philip Hensher on a little-known episode of first world war history when a munitions factory in Kent exploded in April 1916, claiming over 100 lives
The Irish Times: read by the smug denizens of Dublin 4 and responsible for the Celtic Tiger property bubble
The most successful newspapers have a distinct personality of their own with which their readers connect. In Britain, the Daily…
Kaiser Wilhelm's guide to ruining a country
The life of Kaiser Wilhelm II is also a guide to how to ruin a country, says Philip Mansel
Like Birdsong – only cheerful
It is difficult to know whether Clive Aslet intended a comparison between his debut novel, The Birdcage, set in Salonica…
To see how good Journey's End is, just look at who it's offended
‘You have no idea,’ wrote the publisher Ralph Hodder-Williams in 1929 to one of his authors, what terrible offence Journey’s…
