Thomas Mann
Love in the shadow of the Nazi threat
Florian Illies describes the charged atmosphere of Europe in the early 1930s, as people grew increasingly desperate to celebrate their last chance of freedom
The moral courage of P.J. O’Rourke
Was it Socrates who said that chaos was the natural state of mankind, and tyranny the usual remedy? Actually it…
Discovering Thomas Mann by motorbike
In Thomas Mann’s astonishing novel The Magic Mountain the indolent young Hans Castorp visits his brave, terminally ill soldier cousin…
From Auden to Wilde: a roll call of gay talent
The Comintern was the name given to the international communist network in the Soviet era, advancing the cause wherever it…
Was Klaus Mann all Thomas Mann's fault?
Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906…
Marlene Dietrich, George Orwell and the rebirth of a nation
The purpose of Lara Feigel’s book is to describe the ‘political mission of reconciliation and restoration’ in the devastated cities…
You realise how little you know of anybody when they die
Whether or not you believe in the afterlife, death remains an impenetrable mystery. One moment a person is making jokes…
When intellectuals are clueless about the first world war
No one alive now has any adult experience of the first world war, but still it shows no sign of…
The best thing to come out of Davos
William Cook visits the Kirchner Museum in Davos, the Alpine town where the German Expressionist found refuge and inspiration
