Books

Modern poetry: I too, dislike it

T. S. Eliot would despair at this year’s shortlist for the prize in his name

When London really was built back better

This is an eloquent book that describes the architecture, culture, topography, and social life of a vibrant city

The dying days of Nazi Germany

A growing body of literature deals with the horrors of WWII from a German point of view

To critique the critic

Harold Rosenberg’s mixed legacy counterbalanced both Communism and formalism

Could the US be heading towards civil war?

A crash course on the causes of modern civil wars

Too woke to travel write?

Perhaps a little less introspection will see a renaissance of the troubled genre

Move over Nigella, Nigel and Nadiya

The cookbook of the year was written by an elderly rogue and self-published

Between Middle Earth and the West

130 years from his birth, what can we learn from Tolkien?

A glorious flowering of difficult ideas

Two newly translated books evoke chapters of the divided and discarded history of Germany’s capital

Dante, 700 years on

We, too, are exiled from Florence