Books
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
From cholera to coronavirus
A forgotten novel offers insights into living with a deadly and dehumanising pandemic
Most Read
The Book of JO’B
James O’Brien’s aggressive incuriosity is becoming ever more embattled as his worldview crumbles
A failed war on fags
The black market has taken over the tobacco trade Down Under
Thank God for Brexit
The EU is a bureaucratic monster and Britain is better off out
I don’t trust the British state
British institutions simply are not functioning in the interests of the people they are meant to serve
The lonely death of Henry Nowak
We must draw lessons from a horrendous and disgraceful case
The sickness of Sickfluencers
Social media and AI are enabling the exploitation of our benefits system
The real problem with rigmarole
A journalistic focus on proceduralism distracts us from deeper political questions
Right-wing fight night
A debate over the future of right-wing politics in Britain offered little heat and less light
Britain will be worse without hereditary peers
The expulsion of the hereditaries is neither fair nor pragmatic
Zackonomics is incoherent and outdated
Zack Polanski is a great political entrepreneur but he is terrible at economics
Broken windows
If small instances of disorder are neglected, greater ones will soon be committed
A second Northern Ireland?
How the SNP squandered a major opportunity for independence
The establishment is still living in an immigration fantasy land
It is influential left-wingers, not the broader public, who have deluded themselves on mass migration
Emin: from the bed to the grave
Not so much a fresh start, as an opportunity to finally take her concerns in earnest
Profile: Alec Douglas-Home
The quintessential Tory grandee who
was the last of his kind: a politician
motivated by service to his country
What Pullman gets wrong about Narnia
Philip Pullman is more like C.S. Lewis than he might think