Books

Not everyone has a novel in them

Literature is the only art in which, it seems, every neophyte is convinced they can succeed

Hellenism in Rome

Children of Athens is an absorbing romp through Greek (and Roman) history

Three novelists pushing the bloat out

Some novels still dare to leave the reader’s hand unheld — without universal success

Ukraine’s cross-cultural contradictions

Has Ukraine overcome its legacy of historical antisemitism?

Grandmasters: a meeting of great minds

Napoleon and Goethe: Touchstone of Genius by Raymond Keene

Don’t just do something, stand there!

Three new books resist the modern cult of busyness

Marshalling India’s maharajahs

Dethroned: The Downfall of India’s Princely States by John Zubrzycki

Encouraging evil for the common good

Mansfield does not condemn him: rather refreshingly he exhilarates in Machiavelli’s genius

Could it be magic?

Magus: The Art of Magic from Faustus to Agrippa by Anthony Grafton

Intellectual property

Property: The Myth that built the World by Rowan Moore