Books
Time doesn’t fly in Bianchini’s company
Heilbron writes with authority and – what is more unusual – genuine passion
The Enlightenment as reading project
This book is not a history of ideas, nor book history, nor cultural history, but something much more
A fabulous box of geeky delights
Historic house inventories provide a remarkable insight into building histories
Tabloid fiction
A new book on journalism gets it wrong
Glowing, noble and assured
A tribute to Victorian churches
Murders for February
Gripping books and the promise of another
Many lives of the first everywoman
Wife of Bath is a brand name all will recognise
The Bedfords: a marriage of minds
Keir Davidson draws on abundant family archives to paint extensive biographies of artistic and scientific patronage
Liar, crook and Hollywood great
For all Cimino’s flaws, there was still “the vision thing”
The new establishment
Who will subvert today’s anti-establishment?
The ongoing fiasco of European defence
Starry-eyed talk of continental cooperation obscures the grim reality of competing interests
Childhood reclaimed
Mobile phones have been constraining our kids’ imaginations — but it does not have to be this way
Doubting the new Ireland
The more traditions have been deconstructed, the more people have experienced a sense of loss
The light and the insubstantial
Poulenc and others: Chamber music (Calliope/DG)
Who’s ready for the Equality Levy?
Birmingham’s bankruptcy is a portrait of Britain’s future
Saving my own bacon
Only the particularly pig-headed will stick it out in the pork farming business
Josephine Tey, woman of mystery
Deeply private, her elegant and sharply engaging writing has often been wrongly overlooked
Murders for February
Hitler, Harlem and the high-life feature in this month’s murder mystery haul
The love that dare not speak its name
Classical music has been tarnished with the dread word “elitism”
Budgets are overrated
Taxation and spending make little difference while Britain is unable to build
From cholera to coronavirus
A forgotten novel offers insights into living with a deadly and dehumanising pandemic
