Books

It shouldn’t happen to a spad

Ministers have always needed people to carry their bags and to tell them what a wonderful job they are doing

Are we killing ourselves with kindness?

Stefan Zweig’s 1939 novel ‘Beware of Pity’ now screams to have its message heeded

Crooked compendium

Ms Lees offers a new take on the template, but she is walking a well-trodden path

Unravelling the myth of George Soros

Emily Tamkin’s ‘The Influence of Soros’ is a lucid, subtle and fair-minded attempt to grapple with a tremendously complex legacy

Mystery of the clicking keyboard

Out of the Ether is an excellent primer on Ethereum, but the general reader might find the minutiae a bit much

Learning from the past

Much of Wisdom of the Ancients makes one appreciate how we get sidetracked by so much trivial nonsense

J’accuse: the legal system in the dock

As a pupil, Alexandra Wilson frequently encountered racially loaded assumptions. In court, clients assumed she was a defendant

Francisco Goya: the embodiment of old Spain

Janis Tomlinson’s new biography of Francisco Goya is a well-informed, comprehensive biography that would make an excellent gift for any art lover

Slow death of the know-it-all

Peter Burke’s new book helpfully provokes the reader to think about the proper place of a broad education in an age unfriendly to polymathy

A lighter shade of grey

This scholarly, readable and objective book will be the standard biography of Sir Edward Grey for decades to come